Trainspotting
by Kelly Chambliss
Summary: My take on the question, "What if our heroes had lost the Battle of Hogwarts?" Minerva in the Muggle world. With Hooch interludes.
1. Chapter 1: The New Tutor, Part I

A/N -- Writing fanfiction is rather like writing a sonnet -- much of the structure is already built in, so the fun comes in seeing if you can play any surprising variations on the form. In this story, I address a question that has already been answered by others, but that I have enjoyed answering for myself: what if the Battle of Hogwarts had been lost? (Lost by our heroes, I mean. In canon, the battle was lost, too, just by the other side.) Initially, the story presented itself to my mind as three short scenes, but it has turned out to be much longer.

It's Minerva-centered. Of course. And the M rating will be more or less justified later.

I'd appreciate hearing what you think, particularly if you note any Americanisms. I plan to post a chapter a week, so if you're interested, mark your Saturday-Sunday calendars.

A Lesson in Logic, or, The Disclaimer:

A. If I owned this series, Minerva McGonagall would be a central character in the Harry Potter books.

B. Minerva McGonagall is not a central character in the Harry Potter books.

C. Ergo. . .

**Trainspotting**

by Kelly

"I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to. . .let's say. . .board a train."

"And where would it take me?"

"On," said Dumbledore simply.

--"King's Cross," _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_

_---_

Chapter One -- The New Tutor, Part I

Gemma Braithwaite pushed her way past the coats that hung near the doorway of the cramped office. Sidestepping the piles of folders stacked on the floor, she dropped her bag onto her desk.

The desk was in the farthest corner, but she had a sliver of window -- her reward for having lasted longest on the job. Not that seniority as a tutor at the University of the Midlands indicated anything other than a loser's inability to move on, of course. But you might as well take what benefits you could get, Gemma thought.

She glanced at the woman sitting opposite. Philippa Benton-Smith bent her head over her work, pretending that Gemma hadn't come in. It was quite an act, considering that Gemma had had to slide her bottom along the edge of Phil's desk in order to squeeze to her own.

So. Phil must still be angry that Gemma had been designated head tutor.

Gemma sighed and debated whether to open the subject again, but before she could make up her mind, Philippa said, "The new tutor has arrived." She nodded at the office's third desk, which now held a battered leather bag. "Must be off to the loo or something."

Ah. She was speaking. A truce, then.

"Who is it?" Gemma asked, hoping she didn't sound too pathetically eager to be friends again.

"Name of Mina Morgan," Phil replied.

"Never heard of her," said Gemma.

Phil snorted. "Why would you? She's a part-time physics tutor at an underfunded poly, or whatever we're called now. It's not as if she's going to have any professional reputation."

Gemma had meant only that the new tutor wasn't one of the postgraduate students, the way most of the part-timers were. But she was determined not to argue. "What's she like?" she asked instead.

"I don't know; I haven't seen her. Gordon told me about her. Why haven't you met her? Weren't you in on the hiring? I mean, you _are_ head tutor."

"You know as well as I do that being head tutor only means that now I have to do all the paperwork and scheduling and listen to everyone's complaints," Gemma said, just managing to stop herself from snapping.

"I do know. I'm sorry." Phil sounded genuinely contrite, and Gemma looked up, surprised. Usually it took Phil longer to get over any perceived slight. But she was smiling. "Pax?" she said.

Gemma nodded and smiled back as Philippa went on, "I would have liked the extra money, that's all, little as it is. You know how hard it is to get by, Gem." She paused and then said quickly, "Have you thought any more about moving in with me? We could really save a lot. . ."

"Oh, Phil. . ." Gemma was distressed. Their relationship was so new, and that had been her mistake with Helena -- trying too much too soon. It wasn't a good idea to rush into permanence with someone you'd just become lovers with; experience had taught Gemma that much if nothing else. "Can't we. . ."

They were interrupted by a brisk voice from the doorway. "Miss Braithwaite?"

"Um, yes, that's me," said Gemma, turning around.

The voice belonged to a tall, older woman who let her eyes run over Gemma and Phil for a moment before she said, "I'm Mina Morgan, the new tutor. Mr. Blackstone said to report to you."

She shaded the word "you" with a slight touch of incredulity, as if she couldn't quite believe she'd be subordinate to someone so many years her junior. Or maybe I'm just hearing things, Gemma told herself. She wasn't used to the idea that she had some authority over the other tutors; it was easy to imagine that they were all challenging her.

Since Mina Morgan didn't look as if she intended to step any further into the maze of the office, Gemma stood and wedged her way past Phil's desk to offer her hand. "Hello. Welcome. I'm Gemma; I'm in chemistry, but I'm the, er, supervisor of all the part-time sciences tutors. This is Phil -- Philippa Benton-Smith. She's chemistry, too."

Mina nodded to her. "Miss Benton-Smith."

"Call me Phil." Gemma was pleased that Phil sounded fairly polite; she didn't always take to newcomers. And this tight-lipped Mina Morgan wasn't giving off the warmest of auras; the gaze she sent around the cluttered office seemed disapproving.

She was probably sixty, Gemma decided, and she carried herself with a self-contained, straight-backed elegance despite the odd collection of garments she wore: a shapeless grey-and-yellow-striped jumper, a blue waistcoat, an uneven-edged, long black skirt over rather surprising lace-up black boots with heels. Though it was summer, a tartan woollen muffler was tied round her neck, its fringed ends trailing to her knees. No makeup. No jewellery. Long black-and-silver hair in a loose braid over her shoulder. In one hand, she held an intricately-carved walking stick.

Mina was looking at her expectantly, and Gemma realised with a start that she'd been staring. She felt her cheeks redden and hastened into speech. "Um, there are three more part-timers in the next office; you can meet them tomorrow. This is your desk, well, I guess you already know that. That's your computer; we share the printer. It's rather old, the computer, I mean; there's a better one in the lab that you'll probably prefer to use during your tutorials. We can talk about your schedule a little later; I'm still working on them. There's a kettle in the staff room next to Gordon's office. Just help yourself to tea and milk and things. We take it in turns to buy the supplies. The phone is in the staff room, too, I'm afraid we all have to share. Er. . .what have I forgotten, Phil?"

Phil was looking amused. "I think you said all of that in one breath, Miss Braithwaite. Maybe you should show Mina around."

"Yes, I'll give you the tour, Mina," Gemma agreed, "and then I think Gordon will probably have some papers for you to sign."

As they walked through the labs and lecture halls, Gemma tried to make conversation, but it was slow going. Mina answered as briefly as possible and asked nothing in return. She had taken her degree from Edinburgh, she said. Yes, she was from Scotland. No, she hadn't lived in England long. Yes, she had taught before. Gemma was about to give up in despair, when, to her relief, Philippa joined them in the corridor and took up the conversational reins.

"You've taught before, Mina? Where?"

The older woman raised an eyebrow and waited a beat before answering, "Scotland."

"Yes, but which school?"

"I doubt you've heard of it, Miss Benton-Smith."

"Phil. So what brings you from Scotland to the University of the Midlands?"

This time the pause was so long that Gemma thought Mina wouldn't respond, but finally she said, "My school closed."

Phil ignored the new tutor's obvious reluctance to talk and pressed on. "Where do you. . .?" she was beginning, but Mina Morgan had had enough.

She turned her back on Phil and cut her off firmly. "Now, if you please, Miss Braithwaite, I'd like to hear something about the training and abilities I can expect from the students."

With an apologetic glance at her lover, Gemma launched into a lengthy description. It was probably far more information than Mina wanted, but at least it took them away from dangerous personal waters. Phil kept quiet, thankfully, and the awkward moment passed.

Gemma hated confrontation. Yet she had an uneasy feeling that a term spent sharing an office with Philippa Benton-Smith and Mina Morgan was going to be full of just that.


	2. Chapter 2: The New Tutor, Part II

Chapter Two --The New Tutor, Part II

Despite Gemma's fears, Phil found Mina more interesting than annoying. Well, make that interesting _and_ annoying. The two were often sharp with one another, and Gemma had the impression that Mina could be even sharper if she'd let herself.

Yet by the end of the first month, Gemma was able to report to Gordon that the new tutor was a capable and effective instructor. If the tone Mina took with the students was sometimes more biting than Gemma might have wished, she also managed to teach them a good deal. And her tartness was understandable. The University of the Midlands didn't exactly attract the most highly-motivated scholars.

Phil frequently laughed aloud at some of Mina's exchanges with them. "I had to skip the lecture, Professor; I, uh, had something else to do," said one young man. "Did I miss anything important?"

"Nothing at all, Mr Gresham," Mina had replied. "I'm fairly confident that you would have gained very little from being present."

The boy's eyes had flickered uncertainly; he wasn't sure whether he'd been insulted. "Er, okay, thanks," he said as he left.

"I'm sorry I didn't seem very well-prepared, but these tutorials are harder than you realise, Professor," protested another student. "I mean, I know you're smarter than us and everything. . ."

Mina had raised an eyebrow. "My dear Miss Haskell," she'd said, her voice dry enough to cure wood. "You're too kind."

The students all called Mina "Professor," although she wasn't, not technically, and it wasn't a title they bestowed on any of the other part-timers. It was Mina's age, Gemma supposed, and, well, there was just something about her. . . Gemma wished she could get her own students to meet their deadlines and appointments with the regularity that Mina's did or to apologise when they didn't. Most people even stood up straighter when they talked to the "professor."

Philippa found Mina Morgan fascinating and spent endless hours speculating about her and trying to mine nuggets of information from her. In this endeavour she was stymied, however; Mina resisted all attempts to draw her out and refused every invitation to pub or cinema or dinner. Gemma was sure that money was at least part of the reason. She sometimes wondered whether Mina could even afford enough to eat; often she'd spend hours at the school without consuming more than a carton of yoghurt.

But when Gemma mentioned this concern to Phil in the office one afternoon, Phil wasn't terribly sympathetic.

"Who wouldn't starve on what we get paid?" she demanded. "But I wouldn't worry about it. Morgan's a managing sort, and, well. . .she'll manage. What _I _want to know is, who _is _she? Why is she here? Face it, Gem, she could do better than this place. And there are so many things about her that just don't add up. That walking stick, for instance. She doesn't need it, not to walk with, that's obvious. But it's never out of her sight. What's the story with that?"

"Maybe it's a sword cane with a poisoned tip," Gemma joked. "She's a spy, MI5."

Phil didn't smile. "No matter what she says about Scotland, I'm not sure she's even from the UK. There are so many ordinary things she just doesn't know about. I swear, at first she wasn't even sure how to use the kettle. And the photocopier? The computer? She's learned fast, I'll give her that, but in the beginning it was like everything was new to her. Maybe she's really an American; don't they have a witness protection thing? For people who testify against the Mafia?"

There was a silence as they both contemplated the notion of Mina Morgan on the run from the Mob.

"It can't be anything like that," Gemma said finally. "Besides, even in America they have photocopiers and computers."

"You know what_ I_ think?" asked Phil after a moment. "I think she's been in prison."

"What!" Gemma couldn't help laughing.

"No, think about it -- it's the only thing that makes sense. All right, maybe she _is_ from Scotland. But what else would explain why she left there and came down here to East Bumfuck where she doesn't seem to know a soul and takes a terrible job and won't say a word about herself and acts like somebody who's been in a coma for ten years?"

"Well. . ." Put that way, Gemma thought. . .it _would _answer a lot of questions.

"Do you think she killed someone?" whispered Phil dramatically. "I'm sure she's capable of it."

"Oh, stop," said Gemma. But Phil was right; prison did make a sort of horrible sense.

"You're the head tutor. Can't you get hold of her personnel file?"

"No." Gemma was firm. "It's none of our business, really."

"Come on."

"No."

Phil shook her head in irritation. "You are _so_. . . Well, fine. Whatever. I'm sure I'm right, anyway. For one thing, it would explain where she learnt to be such a posh dresser."

Gemma had to laugh again at that, although Mina's clothes were another reason to suspect that she didn't have much money. Occasionally she'd exchange the striped jumper for an equally-baggy green one or replace the rusty black skirt and heeled black boots with a pair of faded jeans and scuffed brown boots. But the tartan muffler and the blue waistcoat were constants, and everything was far from new. Still, Gemma liked the jeans; they emphasised the feline grace that she always noticed in Mina.

"Seriously," Phil went on. "She looks like she looted the rubbish bins at an Oxfam shop. In the dark. I'm tempted to give her some fashion tips. . ."

"Don't you dare," Gemma warned. Phil was probably kidding, but you could never tell. "She's just eccentric. Leave her alone."

"Don't you at least want to know what crime she committed?"

"We don't know that she committed any crime at all!" Gemma exclaimed. But although she didn't like to admit it, she was half-convinced. "Oh, Phil," she said soberly. "I'd hate think of her in prison."

"Softie," Phil scoffed. "I'm sure our Mina held her own there. And you know what else? I think she's one of us."

"What do you mean? An organic chemist?"

Phil rolled her eyes. "No, brainless. One of _us_ -- a lesbo, a dyke, a sister of Sappho, call it what you will."

"You're mad."

"No, I'm not. I can tell. Just the way she interacts with people; she responds more to women. You can see it with the students."

Gemma sat forward. "Has she done something inappropriate. . .?"

"God, sweetie, you are too funny. No, nothing like that. I don't mean she's trying to seduce anyone. It's just. . .she likes women. I can feel it."

"She's at least sixty years old!" Gemma knew she was being silly, but for some reason, she needed to object. Their elderly physics tutor, a lesbian convict? All of a sudden, it was just too much.

"So? What's her age got to do with it?" Phil demanded. "_I _think she's hot. . .that hair and those boots. . ."

"Phil! Don't forget your girlfriend is sitting right here."

Philippa laughed and held out her hand. "A tenner says Mina Morgan is a lavender lady."

"A tenner," Gemma agreed, shaking hands.

A knock sounded on the door frame, and Gemma turned to face what she assumed were two students, a boy and a girl. _God, I hope they haven't been listening_, she thought. Aloud, she said, "Good afternoon. Are you looking for one of us?"

The boy answered. He was about eighteen, slight, with glasses and unkempt dark hair. "We wanted to see, er, Mina Morgan," he said.

"She's not here at the moment," Gemma said, knowing they could see that for themselves. "You're her students?"

"Actually," said the girl, pushing bushy brown hair out of her eyes, "we're. . .her grandchildren."


	3. Chapter 3: The Grandchildren, Part I

Chapter Three -- The Grandchildren, Part I

"Her _grandchildren_?" Phil said, not bothering to conceal her amazement. She and Gemma exchanged glances and then looked back at the figures in the doorway.

"I'm. . .Henrietta," said the girl. "And this is Peter. We really need to talk to. . .Gran. Do you know when she'll be back?"

Phil left Gemma to explain, "She's finished her tutorials for today, but I don't know whether she's gone home."

"Could you give us her address?" Peter asked.

Henrietta elbowed him as Phil said incredulously, "You don't know your grandmother's address?"

"We haven't seen her for a while," said Henrietta, with a grimace at Peter. "Our families have been. . .estranged."

"I'm sorry, but I can't give out a staff member's home address," Gemma said. "She'll be in tomorrow, though."

Peter and Henrietta looked at each other, disappointment strong in their faces. "Could she be anywhere else in the building?" Henrietta asked, in a tone that suggested she was grasping at straws.

"Well, you could look in the lab," Gemma offered, wanting to help them. "I'll show you."

But the lab was empty. Gemma felt bad, yet beyond repeating that Mina would return in the morning, she wasn't sure what else she could do. She couldn't ring her; Mina didn't have a telephone.

"We'll come back tomorrow, then," Henrietta said. "Thank you." She and Peter headed towards the entrance lobby, leaving Gemma to trail back to the office, feeling unaccountably anxious.

Phil burst into speech as soon as Gemma stepped in the room. "I didn't believe them for a minute," she said. "They're no more Mina's grandchildren than we are. That girl was obviously making things up as she went along."

"You don't know that," Gemma said, more sharply than she'd intended. "Families do become estranged, you know."

"That's true," said Phil, narrowing her eyes. "If they really _are_ her grandchildren, then the prison scenario is even more likely -- whatever she did must have been so bad that the family disowned her, they wouldn't let the grandkids have anything to do with her. Maybe she killed her female lover, and they couldn't. . ."

"Stop it! Just stop it." Gemma was disgusted with Phil and with herself, too. "We're acting as if Mina's life is a storybook for our entertainment. Here's a person we work with every day, and I think she's unhappy and alone and maybe even in some sort of trouble, and all we do is sit around and hope for a juicy scandal. What's wrong with us?"

Phil had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry. You know I didn't mean it like that. . ."

She broke off, her eyes widening. Mina Morgan had just come in. She looked tired, but her voice was as brisk as ever. "Miss Braithwaite, Miss Benton-Smith," she greeted them.

"Phil," said Phil automatically. With a pointed glance at Gemma, she continued, "Your grandchildren were here, Mina. You just missed them."

"My. . .what?"

"Grandchildren. What were their names again?" She shook her head slightly at Gemma as she spoke, evidently wanting to test Mina.

But Gemma didn't feel like playing. "Peter and Henrietta," she said, ignoring Phil's glare. "They said it's been a long time since they've seen you."

Mina paled, and for the first time since Gemma had known her, she leant on her walking stick as if she needed it. "Peter and Henrietta," she repeated. Her face was impassive, but something flashed in her eyes. "Describe them, please."

"Describe them?"

"Yes, Miss Braithwaite. Describe them. That means, tell me what they looked like."

Phil snickered, and Gemma flushed.

"Well, they were student age, eighteen or nineteen, the boy was thin and had dark hair and glasses, and the girl had a lot of brown hair, sort of frizzy, and. . ."

"How long ago did they leave?" Mina interrupted harshly.

"Just a few minutes," Phil drawled. "You can probably catch them if. . . "

But Mina was gone.

---///---

"Henrietta! Peter!"

Harry Potter vaguely heard the voice calling out behind him, but, head down, shoulders hunched, he would have paid no attention had Hermione Granger not stopped and dug her fingers painfully into his arm.

"Harry!" she cried. "It's her!"

Harry turned in time to see Hermione fling herself upon someone who had come up to her in the busy street, but so thoroughly did she envelope them that for a moment he couldn't see who it was.

A pair of grey-striped arms hesitantly embraced Hermione in return, and then Minerva McGonagall was gently putting the girl aside. "Easy, Miss Granger," said the well-remembered sharp voice, but the professor was smiling as broadly as Harry had ever seen her, and she kept her hand on Hermione's shoulder. He didn't know if he would have recognised her on his own, so different did she look without her robes, her bun, her square spectacles. And McGonagall in jeans? That had to be one of the strangest sights in a year full of them.

"Hi, Professor," Harry said. He knew his own grin must look as goofy as Hermione's, and McGonagall actually laughed.

" 'Hi,' indeed, Mr Potter," she replied and then turned to glare at a large man who crashed into her from behind.

"Stand in the middle of the pavement, why don't you?" the man growled. Harry became aware of a stream of people parting around them and glowering. He glanced about; in a row of nearby shops was what looked like a student café. "In here," he said, opening the door.

It wasn't much of a place. The steamy air smelled of old chip grease, and the tables were streaked with previous patrons' sauce, but the normally-fastidious McGonagall didn't seem to notice. She just pulled out a chair and motioned Harry and Hermione to sit opposite her.

"Three coffees," she said to the sullen-looking server who approached the table. "Now," she began, at the same time that Hermione said, "Oh, Professor, I can't tell you how glad we are to see you. Until a couple of weeks ago, we didn't even know who was still alive, but we finally found Mr Weasley, and . . ."

The professor held up her hand. "Wait, we need a conversation charm; we mustn't be overheard." She steepled her fingers on her forehead, concentrating. "There," she said after a moment, leaving Harry feeling a little disconcerted, as he always did when he watched someone cast a non-verbal, wandless spell. All that power, hidden and unexpected. No wonder Muggles were frightened of magic.

McGonagall was looking at Hermione. "How did you manage to take so many classes during your third year, Miss Granger?" she asked.

"What? Oh, I. . .you arranged with the Ministry for me to have a time-turner."

"Potter, what question did the Ravenclaw door ask of me on the night of the Battle?"

Harry had to think about it; the Battle of Hogwarts -- so barely lost, but lost all the same -- was something he preferred to forget. " 'Where do Vanished objects go?' " he answered finally.

McGonagall nodded, satisfied. Harry was wondering whether they needed any further proof of _her _identity when Hermione said, "The year Dolores Umbridge was at Hogwarts, and she tried to sack Trelawney -- do you remember the first thing you said, Professor, when you came into the hall and saw what was happening? That you asked me later not to repeat?"

The professor eyed her sternly, but Hermione just grinned, and at last McGonagall did, too, somewhat wryly. "You know I didn't realise any students were so near," she said. "But I believe my exact words were 'Merlin's fucking beard.' "

Harry choked back a laugh and was grateful that the server appeared just then with the coffees. The stuff was scalding and bitter enough to make him choke in earnest, but the professor ignored him. When the waitress was out of earshot, she said, "Now -- who told you how to find me?"

"Mr Weasley," said Hermione and went on rather breathlessly. "We're staying with him for a bit. He said to tell you that the network of safe houses is almost arranged, and he'll probably start gathering everyone together again in a month or two. The plan is the same: when everything is ready, he'll send a summons through the charmed Galleon. And then. . .well, we're still the Order of the Phoenix, he says. We can start to fight again."

Stated that way, it didn't sound like much of a plan, Harry realised. Apologetically, he said, "It's not a lot of news, I know, but Mr Weasley said it wouldn't hurt to check in with you."

"He wasn't going to let us come," Hermione continued, "but when we heard you were at a school, we convinced him no one would notice us; we could act like students. He still took some persuading, though. You know he doesn't want any of us to know too much about where the others are hiding. In case we get captured by Death Eaters or something. Mr Weasley and Kingsley Shacklebolt are the only ones who know where everyone is."

"How many of us are there?" McGonagall asked quietly.

"I don't know. Quite a few, I think; Mr Weasley says that more survivors and sympathisers get in touch with him every day. Kingsley has been organising relief work. The word is spreading. Bill and Charlie Weasley are alive. Professor Sprout. Amos Diggory. Hestia Jones. Flitwick. A lot of people from the Ministry. Lee Jordan. And Aberforth Dumbledore -- he's the one who helped Harry and me get to Mr Weasley."

McGonagall smiled briefly. "Yes, Kingsley let me know that you and Mr Potter had been found." She didn't ask how they had escaped from the battle, which was fine with Harry; he assumed that she didn't want to talk about that night any more than he did. She said only, "What about your Mr Weasley? Ronald?"

Hermione raised her chin defiantly. "His body hasn't been found. So I believe he's alive." Turning away abruptly, she fumbled in her bag and took out a parchment. "It's the list of known dead," she said. "Mr Weasley's been maintaining it; he said to show it to you."

She handed the parchment to the professor, who took it after the slightest of pauses. "It's wandless; just tap it and say 'rest in peace,'" Hermione said softly. "Come on, Harry, let's get some air."

Outside, they watched through the grimy café window as McGonagall pushed aside her untouched coffee and spread the parchment on the sticky table. She held her hand over it for a moment and then, closing her eyes briefly, tapped it once.

The names of the dead, Harry knew, were scrolling slowly across the page. Hagrid. Molly Weasley. Fred Weasley. Augusta Longbottom. Dean Thomas. Colin. Luna. Professor Trelawney. Oliver Wood. More than he could stand to think about. He thrust his hands deep into his jacket and tried to concentrate on something else, anything else. The bits of fluff in his pockets. Hermione's hand tight on his arm. The light gleaming off the silver streaks in McGonagall's long braid.

But this last image brought him back to the professor and the parchment.

She read the list with her fist against her mouth, as if forcibly to keep herself from crying out. When she finished, she sat unmoving, her back straight, her eyes closed.

It took Harry a few minutes to realise that she was weeping. The tears ran unchecked down her face, and her chest heaved, but either she made no sound or the conversation charm held; no one else in the café even glanced at her.

Hermione gripped his arm harder. "I shouldn't have given it to her here; I should have waited for some place more private."

"What difference does it make?" Harry asked, knowing he sounded harsh, but not knowing how to stop himself. What did it matter where you were when you heard bad news? Pain was pain.

He didn't speak again, and neither did Hermione. They just stared through the window, waiting, until McGonagall wiped her hands across her cheeks almost angrily and stood, picking up the parchment as she dropped some Muggle coins onto the table.

Then she was stalking past them on the pavement. "Come," she threw over her shoulder, and they hurried after her. Harry was reminded of his first year at Hogwarts, when his eleven-year-old legs had been unable to keep up with McGonagall in the corridors. He could match her stride now, but he still felt as if he were falling ever farther behind.


	4. Chapter 4: The Grandchildren, Part II

A/N -- This chapter comes with a tip o' the wand to my friend the Real Snape. My sincere apologies, my dear, for what you're about to read. I'll make it up to you, I promise, with a fic of your choice.

Chapter Four -- The Grandchildren, Part II

Eventually Professor McGonagall slowed and turned towards them. She didn't look happy, but her face had lost the terrifying grimness that had marked it when she left the café.

"Thank you, Miss Granger," she said, giving Hermione the death parchment. "You said this list contained. . .the known dead. How are they known?"

"Someone reliable has to have actually seen their bodies," Hermione replied. "Mr Weasley won't trust rumours."

"But has there been. . .less-reliable word. . .on others?"

"There are conflicting reports on Ginny," Harry said, before McGonagall could ask or Hermione explain. He'd got so that he didn't like to hear others speak of her.

"Longbottom?"

"He's fine," said Hermione.

"Sinistra?"

"No word."

Then McGonagall asked, perhaps a little too carefully, "Hooch?"

Or maybe Harry just imagined the slight change in tone because of a rather cryptic remark of Mr Weasley's. He saw Hermione's eyes flick towards him and knew she was remembering as well. "If Minerva asks about Madam Hooch," Mr Weasley had told them, "don't give her any false hope."

"No word," Harry said, speaking carefully in his turn.

They turned off the main road and walked in silence except for the light tapping of McGonagall's stick. Harry had no idea where they were going, but trusted that the professor did. After a moment, she said, "Tell Arthur. . ."

And then more firmly: "Tell Arthur to add Poppy Pomfrey to the list."

_You've seen her body_? Harry nearly questioned but then stopped himself. Of course she had, or she wouldn't have said anything. He closed his mouth; he didn't want to know more.

But Hermione did. "Oh, no! Where did you see her?"

Some of the grimness returned to the professor's face, and when she answered, her voice was expressionless. "We were in the forest, Miss Granger, if that matters. There were Death Eaters. I saw the Killing Curses hit her in the back, I saw her collapse."

Her usual dryness returned with her next words. "I didn't actually check her pulse, but I trust my evidence will be sufficient for Arthur."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Hermione said, but the professor wasn't listening; Harry was certain that in her mind, she was back in the forest, watching Madam Pomfrey fall.

"How did you get away?" Hermione asked next, but it was too soon. McGonagall turned on her.

"I'm a bloody Animagus, Miss Granger, have you forgotten?" she snarled. "It's instinct now; I transformed before I even consciously registered what the curses were. So, yes, I saved my own life and let Poppy die. But at least you can have the satisfaction of updating your damned list."

Pushing past them, she strode off down the path without looking back.

Hermione stared after her, stricken. "Oh. . .I didn't mean. . .But, Harry, it's not her fault."

"I know," Harry said. And most likely, he thought, so did McGonagall.

But he also knew that knowing didn't help. Not when you felt guilty just for being alive.

---///---

The professor stopped at the next corner and stood with her head tilted back, one hand behind her neck. She looked fierce and frustrated. And alone.

Harry and Hermione waited a minute and then headed up the road to join her.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," she said as they approached. "That was uncalled-for."

"It's all right, Professor, really," Hermione said.

McGonagall seemed about to say more, but then she nodded and changed the subject briskly. "Well, here we are. My lodgings."

Harry turned to stare at the dilapidated old house, once a Victorian family villa but now apparently a warren of run-down flats. Muggle music thumped from somewhere upstairs, and moss grew on part of the walls. Rubbish overflowed the bins near the back. Greyish net curtains hung unevenly in some of the windows; others were bare.

Hermione was clearly horrified, and although Harry tried to keep his face blank, he must have failed, for McGonagall looked at them both and her lips twitched, as if she were trying not to smile. "Come now, it's not as bad as all that," she said. "There's a mix of students and old-age pensioners, so you see, I'm quite at home."

She seemed determined to make the best of things, at least in front of them, so for her sake, Harry tried to play along and act as if he didn't find the house more depressing than Number 12, Grimmauld Place had ever been. Hermione was doing the same, he could tell. They followed the professor up dim and creaky stairs to the first-floor front.

The single room was spotlessly clean but spartan. A two-bar electric fire stood in the original fireplace. A table under the window contained a neat stack of student reports with several Muggle biros lined precisely alongside. There was a lumpy-looking settee with a faded orange cover that Harry assumed doubled as a bed; he could see no other. At an angle to the sofa was an equally uncomfortable-looking armchair. In between, a small table held a Muggle electric lamp and, oddly, several issues of the _Sun _tabloid_._ The only other furnishings were an ancient wardrobe and a scarred kitchen dresser containing an electric kettle and a few mismatched plates and cups.

"Sit," McGonagall ordered, pointing at the settee with her stick. She settled herself into the chair and carefully switched on the lamp; Harry was somehow relieved to notice that she'd first made an abortive gesture towards it, as if intending to wave it alight magically. It was reassuring to know that underneath her Muggle façade, the witch remained.

Hermione had her eye on the walking stick. "Are you all right, Professor?" she asked, nodding towards it. "Have you been injured?"

In answer, McGonagall lifted the stick and pointed it at the table near the window. Several brightly-burning candles appeared, and the Muggle lamp flickered and went out. "My wand," she said. "Transfigured."

Hermione was amazed. "But. . .but how can you use it like that? In a different form?"

"It _is_ rather an adjustment, I admit. But it's safer this way. I can have my wand in easy reach without attracting the Muggles' attention. No one is surprised to see an old woman with a walking stick. In any case, I do as little magic as possible; we can't afford to leave traces of ourselves."

"You're not old, though," Hermione told her loyally.

And just now, she didn't look it, not with her face sculpted by the candlelight and her body lean in the old Muggle clothes. She looked ageless and wise, and Harry was suddenly ferociously pleased by her very existence.

She caught him staring at her. "Is something wrong, Potter?" she asked, a trifle sharply. He was pleased to hear that, too.

"No, it's just. . .you look so different, Professor," he said. "Almost like a real Muggle."

She lifted an eyebrow slightly, but let the "almost" pass. "Well, that's the idea, Harry -- to look different. And to hide in the Muggle world as best we can. We're not invisible, though, you know. You-Know-Who's minions might live in darkness, but they aren't blind. They could be anywhere. But I think I'm safe enough for now."

McGonagall stood up abruptly, as if she'd made all the personal revelations she could bear. "It's getting late," she said. "You must be hungry." She frowned at the few shelves mounted near the dresser. "But I'm afraid there's not much food here at the moment." As far as Harry could tell, "not much" translated to "none," unless he counted a tin of tea and a bottle of Muggle whisky.

"We can't stay, anyway," said Hermione regretfully, getting to her feet as well. "Mr Weasley arranged a portkey for us near the school. We should start back; it's almost time."

"Can you find your way?" asked McGonagall. "You'll be less conspicuous by yourselves."

Hermione nodded, but Harry could tell she was reluctant to leave. She looked at the professor. "Will you be. . . " she began.

"I'm fine, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, in that school tone that put an end to all discussion. She returned Hermione's parting hug quickly but tightly and answered Harry's one-armed embrace with one of her own. It still surprised him, the fact that he was now taller than she was.

"Goodbye, Professor," he said.


	5. Chapter 5: The Professor

A/N: This chapter represents my first attempt to write from McGonagall's point of view, something that raises all my writing insecurities. She's a character I can best handle from the outside; one of the things that most attracts me to her is that she's enigmatic, unknowable somehow. So I feel I write a better "Minerva observed" than I do an "in Minerva's mind." But the story seemed to demand a little tour through her thoughts, so here it is. You will let me know, I hope, where I go astray.

There's not much action in this chapter. If we were to send it a letter by owl, the address would read, "Chapter-in-a-Chair, Run-Down Bed-Sit, Muggletown."

Chapter 5 -- The Professor

Minerva waited until Harry and Hermione appeared in the road below, and then she cast a concealing charm over herself and slipped out after them. It was foolish, perhaps, but she knew she could not be easy unless she saw them reach the portkey safely.

Snatches of their conversation drifted back to her as she followed them. ". . .bad as Grimmauld Place. . .has enough money?. . .should do something. . ." and finally an entire sentence from Potter: "She says she's fine, Hermione; I think we've just got to trust her."

Then Hermione: "Well, she obviously hasn't lost any of her powers. I mean, imagine being able to work with a transfigured wand. . ."

Their concern touched Minerva. It had been good to see them, although she hoped that Arthur hadn't made a mistake in letting them visit, that it wouldn't expose any of them too badly. They weren't as hidden as they liked to think. But at least Potter had had the sense to charm away his scar.

She paused as her former students stopped at a dustbin near the door to her sciences building. They leant against it idly, just two young people lounging about of an evening. . .then suddenly the bin glowed brightly and vanished, taking Harry and Hermione with it.

McGonagall swore silently at Arthur for choosing so public a place. Far too risky. But when the bin reappeared, looking its battered, ordinary self once again, she breathed a bit more easily. No one seemed to have noticed; with luck, no harm had been done.

So they were gone, Miss Granger and Mr Potter. Minerva stood alone near the darkened building, and if she felt suddenly chilled, she told herself it was the night air.

---///---

Forty minutes later, McGonagall sat in the armchair of her room, the remains of an Indian takeaway on the table and a tumbler of whisky in her hand. The food had been an extravagance; she usually made do with tinned soup and that tasteless, though cheap, packaged Muggle bread. But seeing Harry and Hermione had unsettled her, and the death list had been. . . Well. She'd needed sustenance.

And now she felt somewhat calmer. The peaty aroma rising from the glass helped. Normally she rationed out her single malt, both for the sake of economy and because she refused to let it become a comfort too easily sought. This night, though, looked to be a long one, and she made herself no promises of moderation.

She had much to think about.

She would have to move on soon. Too many people knew her location now, and even if they hadn't, it wasn't wise to remain more than a few months in any one place. But she would stay until the end of term if she could; she owed Gordon that much. Well, in truth, she owed Gordon more than she could ever repay. He was the university administrator who had arranged her position, and more important, he had given her refuge when she had sorely needed it.

Gordon Blackstone was a Muggle, but he had a wizard brother, Giles, who had been in Gryffindor some time ago. Minerva had come to know Gordon well over the years; his passion for Muggle physics matched hers for transfiguration, and they met regularly to talk about their work. Settled comfortably in Gordon's sitting room, they would discuss, debate, compare, and drink (she Muggle scotch, he Wizard firewhisky), ending each evening with a toast to the fundamental similarities of their very different sciences and magics: "To space, time, and matter."

He offered her a welcome understanding of his elegant theoretical world, and one night, just as she had been about to leave, he had drawn her to him and offered her his bed as well. "Please stay," he'd whispered against her hair, and she had.

Theirs had been a gentle, undemanding affair, pleasurable in its way, but nonetheless, after a time Minerva let them drift back to just friendship. Her heart was never in relationships with men, and heart was something she needed. Gordon had not pressed her, but she thought he had been disappointed.

Yet he was a kind man, and he had helped her unstintingly when she'd come to him soon after Voldemort's return. Together, they had planned for the contingency of her leaving the wizarding world: documents, potential housing, work. He'd helped her convert some of her assets into Muggle funds, setting up the sort of easily-accessed, unobtrusive account that his family had used during Giles's school years. She'd even begun to explore the mysteries of Muggle technology.

Still, the whole business had been as abstract as Gordon's particles and strings. Despite what she told herself about importance of being prepared for any eventuality, she had never really expected that she would need the plan. Not even after Albus's death, not even during the hell that had been Hogwarts in its final year, had she ever truly believed that her whole universe would collapse as thoroughly as a star into a black hole.

But it had, and she had fled her former life with no more than her wand and the hope that a few of the Order members would survive to be contacted.

Gordon had asked no awkward questions when she'd turned up at his door on the morning after Hogwarts fell, speechless with the shock of it. He had simply taken her in, and then, once she was as settled as she was going to be, he had contrived to let her know, subtly, that he would be glad to resume their former intimacy.

It was on nights like this that Minerva considered it. The chance for a few hours of connection, of human warmth, of sensation that could let her leave thought and memory behind. . .yes, it was tempting.

Yet she knew she wouldn't -- not only because it would add an unnecessary complication, but because this time, she would simply be using Gordon, which she did not wish to do. And even if he wouldn't mind. . ._his_ touch was not the one she craved.

She let more whisky trickle into the glass and tried to turn her mind to her current situation. The financial problem would soon be acute. The university paid its part-timers little, and Minerva sent as much to Kingsley as she could; so many displaced wizards needed help. So far, she'd been able to avoid using the Muggle account Gordon had set up for her, and she planned to keep it intact, even if that meant giving less to the relief effort. Because once those funds were gone, there would be no more, nothing beyond whatever she could manage to earn in the Muggle world.

McGonagall knew her Gamp's Law, of course: money couldn't be conjured and could be transfigured only with great difficulty. To do it, she'd have to interfere magically with timelines and substances in ways that would almost certainly be noticed by Ministry or Gringotts officials. Financial transfiguration was a danger to both worlds; her own would be on the watch for it, especially now. If she were ever to risk it, she would do so only in the most needful of circumstances and not just for herself.

Her own problems remained, though. Her salary from Hogwarts had never been large, but she hadn't needed much, not with room and board assured. Still, she'd managed to save a bit, and it was that money that had gone into the Muggle account. Her only other asset was a small family inheritance that had been in the same Gringotts vault for generations, much reduced from the once-grand McGonagall holdings, to be sure, yet enough, she had hoped, to see her through retirement.

But that vault and its contents, unfortunately, were now in the hands of the Dark Lord.

She knew this because the Muggle tabloids on her table, the ones that had caught Mr Potter's bemused eye, were in fact enchanted copies of _The Daily Prophet_, sent courtesy of Kingsley Shacklebolt to Gordon through the Muggle post. Less than a month after the final battle, the _Prophet_ reported that the Voldemort-controlled Ministry had seized (although the word they used was "recovered") the assets of all "traitors."

And Minerva, according to that same issue, was now considered "the Traitor of Hogwarts" -- number three on the Ministry's "Most Wanted" list, after Shacklebolt, and of course, Number One, Harry Potter himself.

---///---

So, she needed money, and she needed a different hiding place, one that wouldn't endanger Gordon or the Muggle young women who shared her office, kind Gemma and the rather astounding Phil. And perhaps less urgently but no less important to her, she needed something to do. Going to ground had made sense for a time -- indeed, at first she had scarcely felt capable of anything else -- but it was starting to feel too permanent, as if she were conceding victory to the Dark Lord. It was time to fight back.

And it was time to stop what she thought of as wallowing; she needed to find a way to fend off the memories that came to her each night as she sat in the darkness, hoping for sleep but now knowing better than to expect much of it.

Sipping slowly, Minerva stared towards the window, but instead of the dreary Muggle flat, she saw again the darkened entrance hall of the castle, the dead lying all around her, the only light that which came from the stars in the Great Hall ceiling -- except that it was no longer an enchanted ceiling, but an actual gaping roof hole; most of the Hall had been blasted away.

She remembered the moment when she finally accepted that further battle would mean only further deaths. Futile deaths. She heard her voice, amplified, saying the once-unthinkable words: "Cease fighting; the castle has fallen; evacuate now."

And then her voice had been replaced by Voldemort's, by his laughter and his echoing, gloating command: "Say 'we surrender,' Professor McGonagall. Say 'surrender,' say it. Say it."

She hadn't. Wouldn't, not to him. But it hadn't mattered in the end.

Minerva replenished her glass.

Before the battle began, she'd warned Horace Slughorn that she would duel to kill. And she had; just as in the first war, there'd been no other choice. Or so she told herself. But she'd forgotten how war made things easy to simplify. To justify.

In the past, she'd killed rarely, and only as a painful, necessary last resort. This time, however. . .

This time, she hadn't been prepared for the ease with which the Killing Curses left her wand or for the exultation that surged through her when they found their marks, bringing down people who only a few years earlier had been her students, girls and boys she would once have risked her life to protect.

It wasn't as if she had ever been naïve enough to think that darkness of the soul was the province only of Dark Lords and Death Eaters. She'd felt it often enough in herself. Seen it in Albus. Yet, like her escape plan, that truth had been easier to contemplate in the abstract.

It was one thing blithely to admit to inner darkness while sitting in the civilised warmth and brightness of one's book-lined study, surrounded by testaments to intellect and reason. It was quite another to shriek out the primal thrill of that darkness while standing over the twitching bodies of its victims.

McGonagall drank deeply.

It was the Forbidden Forest she saw now, a place she'd normally avoided but that on the night of the battle had been a welcome sanctuary. She had stayed in the castle until she could find no one else to assist, had stayed until staying had been no longer brave but just stubborn and reckless, and then she had headed for the cover of the forest, summoning the energy for one last concealing spell that she dropped as soon as she reached the trees. She had been almost drained of magic by that point, a frightening state in itself, yet she knew that the danger was by no means over. Death Eaters roamed the grounds. And they would be looking for her.

"Minerva? Is that you?" The whisper had been barely audible, and McGonagall had whirled, wand drawn, only to feel a flash of joy and relief as she recognised the figure of Poppy Pomfrey standing just a few metres away. Poppy was carrying the small bag that she always used for the shrunken contents of her healer's cupboard; she must have remained behind to gather up supplies she'd known the wounded would need.

Minerva had taken no more than a step towards her when suddenly the air was green with Killing Curses, Death Eaters were howling along the path. . .and Poppy was lying dead.

---///---

_She closes her eyes and lets them come to her. Her dead. Most of the time, she is able to keep them at bay, but they are always on the edge of her thoughts. Poppy. Amelia Bones and Alastor Moody. Albus. Remus and Hagrid. Augusta. And. . .most likely. . . Rolanda. Some of them her lovers, all of them her friends. All of them still deeply loved._

_She sees them now, their faces, one by one._

_Her glass and bottle are empty, and McGonagall places them carefully on the floor. She will soldier on, she knows, because that is what she does. And because anything else _would_ be surrender, which she doesn't do._

_But sometimes -- very occasionally and very briefly -- when she thinks of her dead, she allows herself to envy them. _


	6. Chapter 6: Pub Interlude

A/N: This brief chapter comes with a tip o' the wand to Headmistress X, whose 'Squid Interlude' (a chapter in the splendid "Ancient Magic") made me want to include an 'Interlude' in my own story. Of course, as a rule, the Muggle world offers fewer opportunities in the way of magical cephalopods, so my interlude takes place in a pub. The squid appears only in interludinal spirit.

---///---

Chapter Six -- Pub Interlude

Gemma was pouring hot water over tea bags in the staff room when Phil hurried in, grinning, delighted. "I've done it," she hissed. "I've got Mina to agree to come to the pub tonight."

"Brilliant!" Gemma gasped. "How did you manage it?"

Phil smirked. "I told her it was your birthday. I said it would mean a lot to you if she came to the Slug and Lettuce with us, but you were too shy to ask her."

"You told her _what_? Phil, my birthday isn't for months."

"Ah, but Mina doesn't know that, does she?"

"Why did you say it was _my _birthday? Why couldn't it have been yours?"

Phil's handsome, rather horsey face turned solemn. "Well, to tell you the truth," she said seriously, "I'm not sure Mina likes me."

Gemma looked down and busied herself with milk and sugar.

"But she does like _you_," Phil went on. "I didn't think she'd feel able to refuse, and she didn't. She said, 'Kindly tell Miss Braithwaite that I shall be honoured to join her.' Prim and proper as you please, our Mina. I knew she would be, prison or no prison. She's the sort of person who takes social obligations seriously."

"A few days ago you had her fitted up as a convicted murderer," Gemma said. "Now you see her as a person who worries about social obligations?"

"There's no reason she can't be both. You know how formal she is. She calls you 'Miss Braithwaite,' for Christ's sake. Besides, I never said she _was_ a murderer, only that I could _believe_ she was. I still think it makes sense," Phil insisted. "She's one of those stern women of principle who always does what she has to do, whether it's killing someone or coming to their birthday party."

This was too much for Gemma, who burst out laughing. "You're a piece of work, Phil," she said, shaking her head. "But did you really say I was too shy to invite her? Why did you have to make me sound so pathetic?"

Phil was unbowed. "I didn't. Well, not much, and anyway, it worked like a charm. She'll be there tonight at eight o'clock. After a pint or two, she'll loosen up, and then who knows what she might let slip about herself?"

Gemma drank her tea in silence. She knew Phil wouldn't want to hear it, so she didn't voice her belief that there wasn't enough alcohol in the world to get Mina Morgan to tell them anything she didn't choose to.

_---///---_

Punctual to the minute, Mina threaded her way through the closely-packed tables to reach the one that Gemma and Phil had come early to claim. Her black boots and skirt looked elegant in the dim pub lighting, and Gemma was relieved to see that she hadn't brought a present.

The first round was hers, Mina told them, quelling Phil's objections with no more than a look. She fetched Gemma's pint and Phil's lager-and-lime, and for herself, a small whisky that she drank slowly. Gemma smiled inwardly. No chance of drunken indiscretions at this rate.

Phil, on the other hand, downed her lager quickly and then draped an arm round Gemma's shoulders.

"Gemma and I are a couple, Mina," she announced, in the slightly-too-loud tone that told Gemma she was nervous. "I thought you should know."

Mina sipped. "I do know, Miss Benton-Smith. I am not unobservant, and _you _are not exactly discreet."

Phil took a deep breath, and now it was Gemma who was nervous. There was no telling what Phil might say. _Please, nothing about the clothes_, Gemma begged mentally. But Phil had bolder things in mind.

"Is there anyone special in your life, Mina?" she demanded.

Mina let the impertinence of the question hang in the air while she studied Phil as if she were looking at something odd and faintly distasteful in a zoo. But she answered.

"No."

"Has there ever been?"

Gemma held her breath, but instead of the curt retort she expected, Mina seemed almost amused.

"I've known High Inquisitors who were less tenacious than you, Miss Benton-Smith," she replied, rather obscurely.

"But has there?" Phil pressed. "Been someone?"

Mina's face softened suddenly, and she smiled to herself. "Oh, yes."

"Where are they now?" asked Phil, ignoring the warning kicks Gemma gave her under the table.

"Dead." Mina swallowed the last of the scotch. "Or so I presume."

Then she stood. "And now," she said, in the voice she reserved for the most incorrigible of students, "as pleasant as this interrogation has been, I must bid you goodnight. Happy birthday, Miss Braithwaite. Whenever it is."


	7. Chapter 7: A Visitor, Part I

Chapter Seven -- A Visitor, Part I

Albert Willitz had been porter at the University of the Midlands since its old days as the East Midlands Polytechnic, and to Albert's mind, the old days had been better days. In the past few years, the school had got above itself, and Albert didn't like it. Time was, people had come to East Midlands to learn a handy trade or a useful science; nowadays, there was all this high-flown talk of research and grants, and the staff was as strange as the students.

Take that Mina Morgan, now. A proper lady, Albert had thought, for all the bits and bobs she wore: she kept herself to herself and didn't suffer fools. He enjoyed watching her take down them as needed taking down. In short, he'd approved of her. And Albert didn't approve of much.

But now he had his doubts about Professor Morgan. Would a lady have friends who looked like they'd escaped from a gypsy fair? Last week a midget had been asking for her; today it was some kind of bird-woman who'd come striding into the staff room without so much as a by-your-leave.

Well, she wasn't going to be Albert's problem, not if he could help it. He didn't need the aggro. Stopping in the middle of the main hall, he looked about for the head tutor. A scared-looking rabbit of a girl, she was, but she was the one in charge, or so they told him. She could take care of whatever the bird-woman wanted.

Good -- there she was, just coming in the door.

"Oy," said Albert, heading towards her.

---///---

"Oy!"

Gemma heard the shout as soon as she and Phil entered into the building. Her heart sank as she saw Albert the porter hurrying across the lobby. "You there! Jenny," he called.

"Albert," Gemma responded politely. Ever since he had heard that she was head tutor, he treated her as though she were in charge of the maintenance and security of the entire building and came to her with every problem. "Is something wrong?"

"Mebbe, mebbe not. There's a woman in the staff room lookin' for your Professor Morgan."

Phil lifted her head like a pointer catching a scent. "Woman? What woman?"

Gemma cringed. Phil and Albert didn't get on; there'd be a scene if he thought she was overstepping. But there would be no deflecting Phil if she thought she might learn something new about Mina Morgan. . .

The subject of Mina had been touchy between them ever since the pub evening, which to Gemma had been an embarrassing disaster but which Phil had hailed as a success. Mina had barely left the S&L that night before Phil started revising her prison scenario, deciding that Mina had not killed her lover after all, but that she and her lover had conspired to kill someone else, preferably the lover's abusive husband.

"That's why she isn't even sure whether her lover is dead," Phil had said. "She can only _presume _she is. It must be a condition of Mina's parole, or licence or whatever it is, that they not have any contact with each other. It's quite, quite sad, really." And she had sighed happily.

It _was _sad, Gemma thought. Or rather,_ they_ were sad, she and Phil, the way they'd pried into Mina's life. She was as bad as Phil, she admitted it. True, she didn't take the same pleasure Phil did in thinking up tragic details, but she was just as curious, just as interested in Mina's story. Well, it was going to stop. As they'd left the pub, Gemma had vowed to leave the poor woman alone. And since then, she had.

She'd feared it would be awkward, seeing Mina in the office on the morning after the ridiculous "birthday" drink, but she needn't have worried: Mina simply acted as if the whole pub episode had never occurred. Thus much to Gemma's relief, everything had returned to normal.

Still, she'd known it was only a matter of time before Phil started in again. And now here was Albert, with his talk of a mysterious woman, practically begging them to dig further into Mina's affairs.

Sure enough, Phil had her nose back on the trail. "Who is this woman?" she was asking impatiently.

"I dunno, do I?" retorted Albert. "I ain't the professor's social secretary. A strange woman, that's all I know. Like a vulture."

Phil's eyes gleamed. "What do you mean, a vulture?"

"She's sharp, like. Beaky. With bird eyes and. . .I dunno." His powers of description exhausted, Albert became surly. "Go have a butchers for yourself, if you're so interested."

Phil needed no further encouragement. Turning from Albert without another word, she headed down the corridor towards the staff room, Gemma in her wake.

---///---

Gemma could see immediately what Albert meant: the woman did remind her of a vulture. Dressed in black trousers and a black tee, she had a hawk-like nose, spiky grey hair, and strangest of all, a pair of piercing yellow eyes that at the moment were focused intently on Phil. She wasn't young, but her body was muscular, and she stood with her feet apart and her arms folded.

"You claim you're a friend of Mina's?" Phil demanded as soon as she got in the door. The proprietary interest she took in Mina made her sound belligerent and sceptical, and Gemma could almost see the vulture-woman's hackles rise.

She tilted her head and narrowed the surprising yellow eyes, which made her look even more like a bird of prey. "Would you rather I 'claimed' to be her mortal enemy?" she snapped.

So committed was Phil to her belief that Mina had been incarcerated that she missed the sarcasm. "Were you in rival gangs or something?" she asked suspiciously. "Well, you can't intimidate _us_. You're not in the prison jungle now, you know."

"Gangs? Prison? What are you talking about?" The bird-woman seemed genuinely confused.

"We know Mina was in prison," Phil said, with an air of someone finally bringing the truth out into the open. "So there's no point in denying it. And if you think you're going to harm her with us around -- well, just think again."

"Excuse us, please." Gemma smiled at the woman with more confidence than she felt and drew Phil aside. "Phil," she hissed in a whisper. "She's not Mina's enemy; that was a joke."

"We don't know. . ." Phil began, but Gemma interrupted. "Stop it, will you? Enemies don't just walk in off the street and announce themselves." Turning back to the bird-woman, she said, "Professor Morgan is probably in the office. If you'd like to come with me. . ."

"Thank you," the woman replied, looking at Phil as though she were fresh out of some modern Bedlam.

They exited the staff room in surreal procession, Gemma leading, followed by Mina's "mortal enemy," with a huffy Phil bringing up the rear. When they reached the office, Gemma started to call out to Mina, who was working at her desk, but the bird-woman stayed her with a light touch on her arm.

"Let me," she whispered.

Leaving Gemma and Phil in the corridor, she stepped through the door and said what sounded like, "So. . .the seeker finds her snitch at last."

Mina looked up sharply and stared in disbelief for several long seconds. Then with a low cry, she was out of her chair and across the room, pulling the other woman into her arms, holding her tightly, rocking her, half-laughing and half-crying. Finally she stood back, her hands on the bird-woman's shoulders, and looked down at her, smiling through the tears.

"Seeker? More like a bludger," she said shakily, to Gemma's confusion and the woman's laughter.

"Glad to see your old Harpy, then?" the bird-woman teased softly.

"Glad? Oh, god, Ro, I thought. . ." Mina seemed unable to let go of her friend; she stroked the spiky hair and ran her hands down the black-clad back as if to assure herself that here was no apparition.

In response, Ro drew Mina close and kissed her, snaking one hand underneath the shapeless green jumper and tangling the other in the silvery black hair.

When she saw the two women's mouths open hungrily, Gemma felt a jolt of shame and jerked back. She and Phil had no business watching this. Catching hold of the door, she tugged it quietly shut.

Next to her, Phil dug an elbow into her ribs and grinned broadly, holding out her hand.

"You owe me ten quid."

---///---

Mina and Ro the vulture-woman came into the staff room just a few minutes later. Mina's hair spilled loose over her shoulders, but otherwise, she had returned to her usual controlled and decorous self. Her face showed no trace of tears, and she stood well apart from her friend; Gemma was sure she would not touch the other woman in public again.

When Mina spoke, it was with her customary formality. "I've got no tutorials scheduled for this afternoon, Miss Braithwaite," she said, "so I will leave for the day. If any students do come round, please tell them that I will see them tomorrow."

"Yes, of course," said Gemma, willing her to be gone quickly, before Phil could say something intrusive. But she should have known better than to hope for it.

"Don't go yet, Mina," Phil called from the tea counter. "Aren't you going to introduce us to your. . ._friend_?"

Mina favoured Gemma with the briefest of smiles and turned towards the door. "Sod off, Miss Benton-Smith," she said.

And left.


	8. Chapter 8: A Visitor, Part II

**A/N**: Yes, after 12,000 words of foreplay, we've reached the sex. At last. This chapter _comes_* with a tip o' the wand to Nema and Cranky Crocus, who first alerted me to the joys of Kittyhawk.

*included for you, Headmistress.

---///---

Chapter Eight -- A Visitor, Part II

Rolanda Hooch surveyed Minerva's dismal bed-sit in silence; she hadn't seen anything quite so grim since her early days in the Quidditch reserve leagues. Then she grinned: she did have some rather fond memories of those days.

"Nice digs, Min," she said.

McGonagall waved a dismissive hand. "They serve the purpose." Her other hand was warm on Hooch's waist, and Rolanda found that she didn't really give a damn about the flat.

"Nice Muggle clothes, too," she said, catching hold of Minerva's sleeve and turning the other woman round to face her. "Let's take them off."

Minerva raised an eyebrow. "In a hurry, are we?"

Rolanda wrapped her arms around McGonagall's neck. "Yes," she whispered, brushing her lips against her lover's. _Yes, because it's been too long already and I thought it was going to be forever_. . . "Yes."

It was only a few steps to the lumpy settee, but Rolanda had no memory of taking them, and she never felt the lumps. She felt only the palpable reality of the woman she thought she had lost, a reality defined at first by softness -- soft hair, soft skin, soft lips, and the indescribable, overwhelming soft weight of Minerva's breasts on her own, a sensation that she always felt to her core, as if for the first time.

And then the time for softness was past, and she was feeling Minerva's mouth hard on hers, Minerva's grip firm on her breast, Minerva's fingers stiff inside her, and she truly thought she could feel her heart clench in her chest as she opened herself to those longed-for and relentless hands.

Not until she had lifted nearly off the sofa in sharp ecstasy, not until she had used her own insistent tongue and touch to make Minerva shudder and clutch against her, not until then did the tightness ease and let her sink into the softness of her lover once again.

Minerva was still breathing heavily, holding Hooch to her, stroking her back and arse, kissing her neck gently. She had come silently, Min had, the way she almost always did. During their first nights together, Rolanda had mistaken this restraint for repression, had deplored it as the sad and regrettable result of Minerva's having been the hide-bound Deputy Headmistress for so long that she couldn't let herself be anything else.

But gradually Hooch had come to understand that the silence was not repression at all; it was focus. It was the same powerful concentration and commitment that Minerva brought to her work and to her magic. And to the people she loved.

It wasn't an easy thing, that intensity, not for Minerva or for those around her, but for Rolanda Hooch, it was. . .well, she'd never told Min this, not wanting to sound loopy, but she'd come to think of their relationship as something like her wand: an extension of herself, with Min as the core. Dragon heartstring. Minerva was stubborn and quick-tempered and . . .and without her, Ro thought, _I'd probably have flown myself straight into the sun long ago._

She began to return Minerva's caresses, running her fingers though the long hair, tracing the sharp hipbones, the long legs. Long minutes passed, and Rolanda felt anchored for the first time since she had fled Hogwarts on her broom at the end of that long last night.

"What now, Min?" she whispered, turning, as she knew too many people did, to Minerva for direction.

But McGonagall was fast asleep in her arms.

---///---

Minerva awoke about twenty minutes later and smiled drowsily into Hooch's face. "Not a dream, then," she said.

"Nightmare, more likely," Rolanda laughed, easing a stiff shoulder from under her lover's head. Then she sobered. "This whole thing is a nightmare. Our lives, I mean. These last two months. . .except for finding you and the Order, they've been. . .well, you know how they've been. What are we going to do now?"

McGonagall sat up. "We'll go on. Gather our supporters. Fight back."

"Oh, Minerva," sighed Hooch, sitting up as well. "That's such a bloody Gryffindor thing to say. But saying it doesn't make it reasonable. We're all scattered and demoralized, we haven't got any resources -- come on, we don't even know who's alive and who's dead. Arthur's going mad with not knowing; he's handling Molly's death better than he's handling not knowing whether his kids are. . . And look at us: I even had an idea of where you might be, and you see how many weeks it took me to reach you. How are we all going to get together, let alone fight?"

"Of course we'll fight," McGonagall insisted. But she closed her eyes wearily. "What else can we do?"

"Well. . ." Hooch bit her lip. "We could leave, Min. Just get the hell out of here. Go abroad, live in India, emigrate to some anonymous American city. There are places in the world where they've never heard of the Dark Lord, where no one will find us, we could live in peace. . ."

But Minerva was shaking her head. "I can't. We can't, Rolanda. We can't simply give up. There's too much at stake. And even if we did just abandon everything, there would be no peace. The Dark Lord will never be content with just Britain, you know that. He's had supporters in Europe for years, and. . . No. I'm not leaving."

"Why is it up to _you _to fix everything?"

"It's up to every one of us! We're all responsible. . ."

"God, I hate it when you go all high-minded!" Hooch's anger propelled her up and off the sofa. "That's the way people die, McGonagall." _Damned noble people like you. _"Don't you fucking understand that?"

"No, of course I don't," Minerva snapped. She was glaring, furious. "What would I know about people dying? All those bodies lying in the Great Hall -- they were sleeping, weren't they? And the Death Eaters I cursed, I'm sure they were just Stunned. So why would I fucking understand?"

Hooch slammed her fist on the table. "You don't have to save the whole goddamned world!" she shouted. "You're not Albus bloody Dumbledore."

McGonagall jerked back as if slapped and then rubbed tired hands over her face. "No, I'm not," she said quietly, her anger gone. "I certainly am not."

Rolanda was instantly back on the sofa, sliding her arms around the tense shoulders. "I'm sorry, Min. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that; I'm just. . .so afraid for you. For all of us. I didn't mean it. You know that."

Gradually Minerva relaxed and leant her cheek against the spiky grey hair. "I know."

"And you're right, anyway; there's nowhere to run."

"Do you really want to?"

_If it would keep you safe? I think I would run to the Dark Lord himself. _"No, don't worry," Hooch said, smoothing strong fingers down Minerva's arm. "We'll stay, Min. We'll fight; we'll face this."

---///---

For a time they simply sat, entwined and silent, trading touches and kisses, before McGonagall pulled on her skirt and jumper and made tea. Hooch watched her from the sofa and thought she looked almost like a girl, with her flowing hair and bare feet.

From the dresser, Minerva watched Rolanda in her turn, reacquainting herself with each much-missed and familiar feature: the impish face with its strong jawline, the skin beneath it just beginning to sag. The muscular shoulders. The small breasts she had thought never to touch again. The rounded stomach, the powerful thighs. It was not a young body, nor a particularly beautiful one, not in the usual way, but then, neither was her own. And in any case, it wasn't youth or traditional beauty that Minerva wanted. It was Rolanda.

She had resisted the relationship at first. As a private person living a life that was anything but, she'd had no desire to play out a love affair -- or its dissolution -- in the intense and constantly-observed crucible that was Hogwarts. Before Rolanda, she had only once become involved with a member of the staff. It hadn't ended well, and the difficulty of having to live cheek-by-jowl with an ex-lover had made her vow never to risk that situation again.

But she had felt something for Rolanda from the start. She knew well those traits that attracted her, and when Hooch had first arrived, Minerva had duly noted her cropped hair, her dashing tie and cape, her cavalier stance. Her quick mind. The way her mouth quirked wryly at some piece of staff or student idiocy. Her clean, efficient control of both her broom and her well-muscled limbs.

She had noted all of this and then had consciously chosen to note it no further, deliberately limiting her interaction with Hooch to discussions of Quidditch and issues of House discipline. The two of them were colleagues, no more. McGonagall was resolved upon it.

And then, on the Christmas of his third year, Harry Potter had received a mysterious, anonymous present: a Firebolt.

Minerva and Rolanda and Filius Flitwick had checked the broomstick for hexes and jinxes; the gift had come at a dangerous time, and they could take no chances. Although Flitwick had fairly quickly decided that the Firebolt was safe, Hooch and McGonagall convinced themselves they were not yet certain. So they met, evening after evening, to test the broom. And to indulge -- as Minerva admitted to herself even at the time -- in the now-undeniable rush of each other's presence. She had felt the arousal like a transfiguration, a shift of nerves and skin and breath to another form of being.

Finally had come the night when the two women both knew that they could no longer find any reason to withhold the broom from Harry. Rolanda had solemnly handed the Firebolt to Minerva, their fingertips had touched, and then, inevitably, their lips. Resolutions be damned.

It was not inappropriate, Minerva thought later, that their first kiss had taken place over a broomstick, even though a wave of Hooch's wand had soon Banished that stick to the corner, along with most of their robes.

But Rolanda's shirt and tie Minerva had slowly removed herself.

And that had been that. Their first night together had become several nights and then many nights and then virtually all. McGonagall had learnt that they could manage to live and love in the castle without turning into a public spectacle, and Rolanda had gradually become as natural and necessary to her as magic.

It had taken the Battle of Hogwarts to teach her two additional important lessons. The first was that, if fate so decreed, she could indeed live without Rolanda. The second was how _very _much she did not want to.

---///---

"It's black; sorry," said McGonagall, handing Hooch her tea. Rolanda took the cup in one hand and used the other to draw Minerva down next to her.

"Why don't you come back with me, Min?" she asked. "To Arthur's safe house? It's warded, it's unplottable. And we could use those headmistress-y organisational skills of yours. Really, now that things have settled down a bit, there's no need for you to stay with the Muggles."

"Soon, I promise. The term. . ." Minerva answered with uncharacteristic vagueness. She did want to finish the term, yet Hooch was right; she probably no longer needed to maintain the Muggle flat in order to do so.

But there was another reason she had to remain where she was, at least temporarily. Filius Flitwick had come to the school to see her the previous week; Hogwarts' diminutive former Charms professor had reported that the number of desperate wizard-world refugees was quickly overwhelming the Order's resources and putting everyone at risk.

"Arthur and Kingsley want to know if you and I can generate some money, Minerva," he'd said. "Our own kind, but the Muggle kind, too. They're aware of the dangers; Arthur's very sorry, but he doesn't know where else to turn. And I think that between our charms and transfigurations, we should be able to manage something, eh, my dear?"

It _was _dangerous, and they both knew it. But they also knew that few would be as capable of success as the two of them. There was no point in false modesty. They would have to try, danger or no danger. It would even be a relief, McGonagall thought; it was a chance to contribute something constructive again. Yet she wanted to do it as far away from the magic world as she could, so as to jeopardise as few people as possible.

She was recalled to the present by a hand stroking her cheek. "Where are you?" asked Rolanda, a bit plaintively.

Minerva caught the hand and brought it to her lips. "With you."

"Don't shut me out, Min. Tell me what you were thinking about."

"I will," said McGonagall, kissing Hooch's palm. "But perhaps a bit later?"

"Mmmmm, good idea." Rolanda slid her other hand under the black skirt. "Because just now, we need to get you out of these Muggle atrocities. Again." Lifting her wand from the floor, she removed the offending garments with a single flick.

---///---

_"Lie back," Rolanda whispers._

_Lightly, she draws the fringed ends of the discarded tartan muffler across Minerva's breasts and then knots the scarf softly around her wrists. Starting at Min's shoulders, she slowly pushes her lover's arms up and over her head; the muffler she twists through the wooden arm of the settee._

_"Don't move."_

_Ro's fingertips trail like silk from Minerva's tied hands to the inside of her elbows. . .to her shoulders and breasts. . .past the curve of her waist to her pale thighs. . ._

_Minerva does not move._

_It is an exercise in control, and she welcomes it, welcomes the questing fingers, welcomes the precision of Ro's practiced tongue, the pleasure centered all the more sharply and deeply inside her because of the effort of restraint. And then words are lost and there is only sensation, sweet and hot and silver, merging shifting breaking spreading outward in ever-transfiguring waves. . ._

_Her back arches; her hands push against tartan wool._

_Her cry fills the room._


	9. Chapter 9: A Night Out, Part I

**A/N**: No saving of the wizarding world occurs this week, because our friends all needed to go out for a nice dinner. I hope you'll indulge them. A tip o' the wand to aptasi and LinZE, who have been kind enough to send thoughtful reviews every week, even though this isn't their 'ship.

Chapter Nine -- A Night Out, Part I

Gemma Braithwaite plumped a pillow behind her and tried to shift into a more comfortable position. Normally she loved sinking into her cozy old rocking chair for an evening of reading, but tonight she found she couldn't settle.

It had been too strange a day. First had come the unexpected appearance of Mina's friend the bird-woman, although Gemma wasn't sure why the visit had so surprised her. It made sense that Mina would have friends, no matter how alone she'd seemed at first, and it wasn't as if visitors were unheard-of. Gemma had already met the grandchildren, after all. Or whoever they'd been.

Still, it was quite obvious that the bird-woman -- Ro -- was no mere friend to Mina. It had been impossible to mistake the nature of their passionate reunion. So Phil had been right about one thing, at least: Mina _did _have a female lover. Yet not even Phil could deny that all signs pointed to Mina's _not_ having murdered her.

But why had Mina seemed so stunned to see her? Had she really believed her to be dead? Where could Ro have been, that her lover would truly have thought her lost? And why couldn't Mina have found some way to learn the truth? Gemma sighed. Even if the prison explanation turned out to be wrong, there was _something_ awry in Mina's life. Gemma couldn't help but be concerned about her.

And then there was Phil to fret over. She'd vanished about half an hour after Mina and Ro had left the building in the morning, and Gemma hadn't seen her since. Phil had afternoon tutorials, so that absence wasn't unusual, but she hadn't come back to the office between appointments, the way she typically did. Gemma wished she could get rid of the nagging suspicion that Phil's disappearance had something to do with Mina and Ro. . .

A rattle at the door sent a wave of relief over her. It was Phil, using her key. They still hadn't taken a flat together, but Gemma supposed it was only a matter of time. They spent every night with one another as it was; it seemed silly to keep up two residences. They should share; that was clearly the sensible option. Gemma couldn't really have said why she continued to resist.

Phil stepped into the flat. "Where have you. . ."? Gemma began, but Phil interrupted.

"Never mind, no time for that now. Get your coat and come on; I'm taking you out to dinner."

"You are?" This was. . .not exactly unprecedented, but it was odd enough that Gemma wanted more information. "Why? Where are we going? What should I wear?"

"To answer your questions in order, yes, you'll see, you'll see, and just what you have on. We have to leave this minute." And she was halfway to the door.

"Phil, wait. I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about."

Phil turned back, annoyed. "Why are you being so tetchy all of a sudden?" she asked. "Just come on, will you?"

When Gemma stood unmoving, Phil folded her arms and tapped her foot. Finally, speaking with exaggerated patience, she said, "I promise I will explain everything on the way if you will just please come along right now. We have to hurry, or they'll be finished before we get there."

With a heavy feeling of her worst fears being realised, Gemma said, "Please tell me this has nothing to do with Mina and her friend."

Phil looked surprised. "Of course it has something to do Mina and her friend. Did you think I would miss a chance like this? I am going to find out the truth about that woman one way or another. It's a matter of principle now. Come _on_." And she headed into the stairwell.

Gemma was strongly tempted to slam the door behind her and stay home, but she was already starting to imagine the sorts of unspeakable things Phil might attempt if left to hunt down Mina on her own. Not that Mina hadn't given ample evidence of being able to take care of herself, but still . . .

Snatching up her jacket, Gemma followed Phil down the stairs and into the road.

---///---

Earlier, Rolanda had opened her eyes to find her face pressed against what looked at first like a flaming sunset, but which proved on further examination to be the orange covering of Minerva's sofa, now transfigured into a bed wide enough for both of them. Min lay spooned behind her, an arm around Ro's waist, a hand on her breast.

Hooch felt safe and warm. . .and damned hungry. For food.

She turned over in Min's soft embrace and kissed what she liked to call the "patrician" nose.

"Minerva?"

"Mmmm?"

"Are you awake?"

"Mmmm."

Hooch added gentle hair-tugging to the kisses. "Professor McGonagall. . .wake up."

"Why?" Min sounded cross; she was not at her best when first roused, as Ro well knew.

"Because I'm starving and I'm going to take you out to dinner."

---//---

". . .then I told Monica that we'd promised to deliver some lab reports to Mina but you lost her address and could she give it to me? And she just went to the file and wrote it out and said 'here.'" Beaming in triumph, Phil brandished a scrap of paper at Gemma as they walked toward the high street. "It was that easy."

"So what you're telling me is that you tricked Gordon's assistant into giving you Mina's address, and then you skived off your tutorials and spent the entire afternoon spying on her," Gemma summed up flatly. She felt . . .well, she felt a lot of things. Exasperated, helpless, discouraged. And very seriously pissed off.

Phil was hopeless, and that's all there was to it. She would never see her actions as the outrageous invasion of privacy they were, so there was no point in even trying to explain. Gemma set her lips firmly and said nothing more.

Phil mistook her silence for lack of objection and bubbled on. "Don't worry, O great head tutor -- I rescheduled everything. And I wasn't spying, not exactly. It's not like I could actually see Mina and her friend, not once they'd got into the flat. It was more. . .just waiting for them to come out. For hours. Jesus, I thought they were _never_ going to stop shagging. And don't tell me that's not what they were doing," she added sternly, even though Gemma hadn't been planning to. "You know they were. You saw them in the office; they were both desperate for it."

Phil was right, no doubt, but Gemma didn't say so. She didn't feel like agreeing with Phil about anything just now. "Where does Mina live?" she asked instead and then chastised herself for letting her curiosity get the better of her.

"In the Hambledon road," Phil answered, with a grimace.

"The Hambledon road? But that's really. . ."

"Shabby. I know. And Mina's house is as grotty as any of them. But a lot of students live around there; it's safe enough. I just hid in someone's overgrown garden nearby and waited. It took effing ages, but they finally came out, and I followed them, and they wandered around a while and then went to Arturo's. So that's where we're going."

"That Italian place? But, Phil, we can't just show up there. They'll know it's no coincidence."

"No, they won't. A lot of people go to Arturo's; why shouldn't we?"

"Have you totally blocked out what Mina said to you this morning? In case you've forgotten, she said, and I quote, 'Sod. Off. Miss. Benton. Smith.'"

"Yeah, well. If she'd been really upset, she'd have said 'fuck off.' So I don't think she was too narked."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Gemma stopped and faced Phil. "She was telling you to leave her alone. Why won't you listen? What is wrong with you? Stop stalking her."

"What are you on about? I'm not stalking her. All I want is some Italian food and maybe the chance to meet the friend of a colleague. Why is that so terrible?"

Gemma opened her mouth and then shut it. There was no arguing with this sort of willful blindness. She didn't think she'd ever felt so frustrated with Phil.

"Are you coming, or not?" asked Phil impatiently.

"Yes, I'm coming," said Gemma, suddenly so furious she could hardly speak. "But I'm coming for Mina's sake, not yours, because I know you're going to do something stupid and ruin her evening, and I'm telling you right now, I'm going to stop you!"

Phil stared at her. "What _is_ it with you tonight? Give over. Why are you being so bitchy?"

But Gemma was storming along the pavement, and Phil was forced to run after her.

"Untwist your knickers, will you?" she panted when she caught up. "You're just hungry; you'll feel better when you've had something to eat. And wait till you get a look at Mina and her friend: that bird-woman is dressed up all cool and slick and butch, and Mina. . .well. You'll see."


	10. Chapter 10: A Night Out, Part II

Warnings: Sapfic. Shoe fetish.

---///---

Chapter Ten -- A Night Out, Part II

Minerva had finally come to full consciousness -- "assembling her faculties," she called the process -- and taken herself off to the communal bathroom.

Rolanda shut the door behind her and shook her head. A shared bathroom? Bloody bludgers, how on earth had Min found this place? And how did she manage to live here? Ro looked around slowly. No food, no real bed, no books. And virtually no clothes, she saw as she idly opened the wardrobe. At any given time, Minerva must be wearing a good half of everything she owned. Like some sort of -- what did the Muggles call them? -- bag lady.

"Min?" she asked, when McGonagall returned. "Do you remember that thing you used to do? Called transfiguration? Have you forgotten how it works?"

"What do you mean? Didn't you watch me transfigure the sofa just a few hours ago?

"Well, then, why do you live like this? Why don't you have any books? Or clothes?"

Minerva's gaze was pointed. "You're the one who doesn't seem to have any clothes at the moment, my dear," she replied, running a hand down Ro's bare back for emphasis.

"Seriously. You could transfigure any old rubbish into something reasonable. But instead you just wear the old rubbish. Why?"

McGonagall didn't answer immediately. She wasn't sure she wanted to explain just how little the details of her life had meant to her when she'd first arrived in the Muggle world. How little most of them still meant. So many of the things she'd cared about in the past either didn't seem to matter now. . .or she couldn't let them matter.

Finally she settled for a gesture at her rumpled skirt and jumper. "I found these at a Muggle charity shop not long after the battle. They cost very little, and they were genuine Muggle -- which was all that concerned me at the time. And I told you, I don't like to use magic here unless it's really necessary. Transfiguring clothing hardly seems to qualify. In any case, Madam Hooch," she went on, deliberately speaking more lightly, "aren't you the person who once said that a robe couldn't be comfortable if it weren't at least a decade old? Since when are you so interested in dress?"

"Since I've seen how lost we all are in this damned world," Ro said bluntly. "Even you, indomitable Minerva. But at least we're here. We've survived. So let's go wild for once, why don't we? Let's tart ourselves up and take ourselves out."

McGonagall looked at her consideringly and then smiled her old smile, the one that took Ro back to those first heady days of their being together, to those wonderfully-sleepless nights in Min's bed. . .so little sleep that she had once actually drifted off during a Gryffindor Quidditch practice and then had yelled at Harry Potter for not waking her. For making her late in getting back to that bed where sleep was the last thing on her mind, though she had chosen not to share this part with Potter.

"All right, then," Minerva said, still smiling the smile. She reached for her transformed wand. "I'll see what I can do. But I may need more than one attempt," she warned. "I'm still a bit slow with this."

Ro responded with only a snort. Min had said the same thing when she'd changed the settee. But even if her "new" wand did slow her down a little, it made no difference to her skills. That sofa had become a bed more gracefully than anything so orange and lumpy had a right to.

"Surprise me, Min," she said, taking McGonagall's threadbare dressing-gown from the wardrobe and preparing to head to the bathroom herself. "Make us something gorgeous."

When she came back, her first thought was that Minerva had transfigured a traditional robe for herself. But it was a dress, an elegantly-severe black dress with long, tight sleeves that covered Min's wrists and a straight neck that rested just below her collarbone, a dress that looked almost prim until Ro realised how sleekly the silky fabric clung, how well the skirt draped over sheer black tights. And the shoes: high black heels with ankle-straps that made Rolanda want to unbuckle them then and there.

On the bed, Ro's black trousers and tee-shirt had been transformed into a tailored jacket and a straight skirt; Minerva was in the process of turning one of her own shapeless jumpers into a crisp white shirt. Ro's sensible trainers had become red leather boots with pointed toes.

Hooch let her mouth drop open. "Merlin's bum, McGonagall. I thought you always said you didn't know anything about Muggle clothes."

"I've learnt."

Twitching the belt from the dressing gown, she changed it into a red necktie that she handed to Rolanda along with the shirt.

---///---

At the door to the restaurant, Gemma was assailed by a fit of nerves that almost made her turn away. How could they avoid being seen by Mina and her bird-woman? And if they _were _seen, how could they possibly explain themselves? Mina would immediately see through any pitiful attempt at "fancy-meeting-you-here," of that Gemma was certain.

But one look at the avid glee on Phil's face made her decide she had to go through with it, come what may. Tonight she could at least minimise whatever damage Phil might do, and if it was anything truly awful, she would just try to make things right with Mina later.

Taking a deep breath, she followed Phil into the candle-lit interior of Arturo's.

And immediately felt better. It had been some time since she'd eaten here, and she had forgotten how the booths and potted plants turned each table into a rather private nook.

Phil was already deep in whispered negotiations with a waiter, who eventually escorted them to what Gemma realised was the perfect table: fairly hidden, but with a good view of the main room. She let herself relax fractionally, although she doubted she'd be able to eat a bite.

"There they are," Phil hissed in a stage whisper that was probably more penetrating than her normal voice.

Gemma peeked cautiously to the side. The bird woman was leaning back, one arm lying along the top of the booth, looking insouciant in a man's white shirt; Mina was all in smooth black, something silver sparkling at her ears, her hair gathered into a loose knot that managed to hold its chic shape without any visible pins or bands, as if she'd simply twisted it back and it stayed of its own accord. _How does she do that, and why is it I never can_? Gemma wondered, fingering the clips from which her own fine brown hair was forever escaping.

She turned back to Phil. "They look smashing."

"Told you," said Phil smugly, as if it were her doing. "What do you think of Morgan's fuck-me shoes?"

"They're hardly that. But it's definitely a change from her teaching clothes," Gemma admitted.

"Well, as I believe I've told you, she's hot, our Mina. Look, they're almost through a bottle of wine already. And it's no plonk, either."

"Where do you suppose they learnt about wine? A prison correspondence course?" Gemma asked wickedly.

Phil ignored her. "I wish we could hear what they were saying. I'd like. . ."

But she was interrupted by the appearance of their server. After they'd given their orders, Phil winked at Gemma and said casually to the waiter, "Those two women in the corner. . .we think we might know them. From our office. Did you happen to notice if they were talking about, uh, prisons or criminal justice or anything like that?"

Gemma closed her eyes. Oh, god. . .

But the boy was incurious. "Couldn't say," he shrugged. "They ordered in English, but otherwise they speak some foreign language."

"French? German?" asked Phil.

"No idea. Can I get you anything else just now?"

---///---

Even though their conversation charm was strong, Rolanda lowered her voice as she said, "Don't look now, Min, but those women are over there. From your office."

McGonagall sighed. "Yes, I saw them."

"That one who said you were in prison -- she's barking, if you ask me." Hooch let the tip of her wand slide from her sleeve into her palm. "If you wanted, I could. . . you know, just a little hex. . ."

"Don't think I'm not tempted," Minerva answered. "But I believe it will make poor Gemma happy if we simply don't notice them. And even better. . .it will make Phil unhappy."

Hooch looked disappointed. "All right, I'll control myself. But if she comes over here and starts fishing for details about gangs or sadistic warders. . .well, then I make no promises."

"Agreed. Perhaps you could practise your jelly-brain jinx?"

"I resent your implication, Professor," Ro said, pointing an admonishing finger and then ruining the effect by grinning. "You know the Harpies always played clean. All those jelly-brain rumours were started by Puddlemere. Hell, they had to excuse that huge loss somehow."

But as she poured them the last of the wine, she grew serious.

"This afternoon, Min," she said. "When I asked you to come back to Arthur's with me, you didn't really answer, and then you said you'd tell me about it later. Well, it's later. So what's going on?"

Minerva set down her glass and reached for one of Hooch's hands.

---///---

"They must be discussing some serious shite there," Phil said, peering toward Mina's corner. "Look at their faces."

Gemma stole a glance. Mina sat tall and straight, talking earnestly, clasping the bird-woman's hand in hers; Ro seemed slightly glassy-eyed, as if she'd eaten something that vaguely disagreed with her. Or it could have been merely the effect of candlelight on the unusual yellow eyes, Gemma reminded herself. She didn't want to be guilty of too much dramatising.

But as she watched, Ro pulled away and folded her arms across her chest. She started to speak, and it was clear that her words were clipped and angry.

"Uh-oh," said Phil. "Trouble in paradise."

---///---

"It's dodgy as hell, Minerva."

"I know that. And I'm sorry, my love, but I don't see any other option just now. I'll be as careful as possible, and so will Filius. I won't take any unnecessary risks." She tightened her grip on Ro's fingers.

Hooch withdrew her hand and leant back. For a moment fury burned in her: at Weasley, at Shacklebolt, at Voldemort. At McGonagall. "Damn it, Min. As far as I can see, the whole sodding project is an unnecessary risk! Surely there's some other way to make money. Look at these clothes you've made. You could set yourself up as a bespoke tailor and transfigure Muggle suits!"

Minerva hazarded a small smile. "And it may come to something like that, one day. But we need a solution in the short-term. This is something I have to do, Rolanda. But I promise that when it's finished, I'll take a holiday from dangerous assignments."

"You promise to stay safe." Rolanda knew she sounded disbelieving.

"Oh, Ro. . .we both know no one can promise that these days. But I swear to you that after this, I won't court danger, and I _will_ do my best to protect myself."

Hooch closed her eyes. "I love you, for fuck's sake," she said through gritted teeth. "Do not go and get yourself killed."

---///---

Gemma watched as Mina reached across the table to lock her hands behind Ro's neck and pull the other woman towards her. The kiss was quick, as was the touch of Mina's hand to Ro's cheek, yet it was enough to make the bird-woman's eyes widen in surprise; Gemma knew it must be very unlike Mina to be so demonstrative in public.

But it was the look on Mina's face as she sat back that made Gemma's breath catch: it was gone quickly, replaced by Mina's customary sternness, but for a brief space, she wore an expression of such unguarded love and yearning that Gemma never forgot it.

_That's what I want_, she thought. _I want someone to look at me like that. Just like that. _

---///---

"Excellent, they've made up," said Phil. "Now's the perfect time to stop at their table and pretend we just happened to see them. Mina will have to introduce us to Ro then. . .I know! Maybe we can get them to come to your place for a drink. You can take Mina out to the kitchen or something, and I'll see what I can learn from Ro. Come on."

"If you go over there," said Gemma quietly, "I will leave you. I mean it." And rather to her surprise, she found that she did.

Phil looked hard at her, and whatever she saw convinced her to stay where she was. She leant back in her chair, her eyes wide with astonishment.

"Let's go," said Gemma.

"But we haven't finished eating yet."

"I'll get the bill."

---///---

Whatever Hooch had expected, it wasn't a public display of affection in the middle of a Muggle restaurant. A public display from a woman who would barely even let her robes brush against Ro's at the Hogwarts high table. But a public display is what Rolanda got.

She got warm hands around her neck and warm lips against her mouth and a cool shiver down her spine as Minerva whispered "And I love you," her fingers brushing Ro's cheek for just the briefest moment of softness and heat before she settled back almost as if she'd never moved. But the truth of her words was there in her face.

Hooch tossed her napkin onto the table. "Let's go," she said. "If I'm not mistaken, you have a tie to untie. And I have some shoes to undo."


	11. Chapter 11: Another Visitor

A/N: A tip 'o the wand to Moira of the Mountain, for her thoughtful reviews.

---///---

Chapter Eleven -- Another Visitor

"And then I seen his eyes, Albie. . .and I come all over queer, I did. . ."

So had whispered Albert Willitz's gran on every Friday evening of his eighth year, when he had stayed with her while his mum worked at the canteen on the airbase. It was a story he never tired of hearing -- the story of the night his gran had walked home through the blackout-dark churchyard and had seen the Man.

But not really a man, no: she'd seen a ghost or a werewolf or a Nazi or a devil. . .which, she never knew, and Albert never cared. Whatever it was, it was the essence of Darkness, and his gran had seen it, and it had looked at her with its red (or sparking or empty or spinning) eyes and had laughed (or growled or snarled or rasped) and beckoned her to join in its mad revels, but his gran had run, had run like the hounds of hell was after her, Albie, and she had escaped and lived to tell the tale, in all its many versions, over and over to her enthralled and eager grandson. . ."I come all over queer, I did. . ."

And now, more than half a century later, his gran's Man -- or devil -- was standing in the Sciences Hall of the University of the Midlands. Looking at Albert.

Albert looked back into the flat, grey eyes and came all over queer. He did.

The Man was pale as death, with a long curtain of yellow-white hair, and he wore some sort of black cape, and his eyes. . .well, after that first glance, Albert couldn't really look at his eyes.

"You are the porter?" the Man questioned curtly. At Albert's nod, he went on, "I am here to see Professor Morgan."

As if Albert couldn't have guessed. His earlier good opinion of Professor Morgan was now barely a memory. _Lady, my arse_, he thought. He dug his hands into his pockets and looked away from the Man and wished devoutly that he still had his gran's piece of lucky cowl, saved from her first-born.

"Did you not understand me?" snarled the Man. "I wish to see Professor Morgan. Take me to her."

But here Albert rebelled. Job or no job, eyes or no eyes, he was not going anywhere in the company of Death.

"She's down there," he said, indicating the corridor. "Last door on the left."

The Man glared; then, with a muttered, "idiot," he shoved Albert aside and stalked out the door, his hair and cape flowing behind him.

---///---

Gemma saw him first, the pale-haired man who swept the office with a disdainful glance, but before she could say anything, he pointed some sort of thin stick at Mina and said,

"Good afternoon, Minerva."

The flare of shock in Mina's eyes made it obvious to Gemma that, unlike Ro the bird-woman of a week ago, this man was no welcome visitor. In fact, if it hadn't seemed so unlike her, Gemma would have sworn that Mina was frightened. But that impression lasted only a moment. When Mina spoke, her voice was cool and dry as usual.

"Lucius," was all she said. She didn't seem to find the pointed stick odd at all. Could it possibly be a gun? Or a sword? At the desk across from Gemma, Phil was staring open-mouthed.

"You'll come with me, Minerva, and if you're smart, you'll give me no trouble," said the man called Lucius. "_He _wants you alive. But he didn't say anything about unharmed."

Mina -- Minerva? -- held out her open hands briefly, as if to show that she was no threat.

"Give me your wand," said Lucius. "Now."

"I haven't one. A casualty of battle, I'm afraid."

Lucius waved his stick and cried, "_Expelliarmus_!" Or so it sounded to the baffled Gemma. When nothing happened, he smiled an unpleasant little smile. "Well, well," he said, casting his scornful glance over Mina now. "You really_ have_ come down in the world. No wonder you need money. Oh, yes -- I traced the money." His lip curled further. "You and Flitwick are good, but I am better. And it wasn't wise of you to let him meet you here; he's a trifle, shall we say. . . conspicuous. Still, none of that matters now, does it?"

Still smirking, he jabbed his stick in Mina's direction. "Stand up, Minerva. Slowly."

Phil chose that moment to find her voice. "Leave her alone!" she shouted, pushing up from her chair. The man turned towards her, stick pointed.

"Lucius! Don't." The authority and warning in Mina's stern voice were undeniable, and rather to Gemma's surprise, Lucius heeded her. In one fluid motion, he turned from pointing the stick at Phil to pointing it back at a glaring Mina.

"If you don't want trouble, don't cause it," she snapped. "Let them be."

After a moment, he inclined his head. "Very well."

To Gemma and Phil, Mina said, "Sit down, both of you. Do _nothing_, do you understand? Nothing."

Gemma didn't even think of disobeying, and she prayed that for once, Phil would listen, too. She had no idea what was going on, but she could practically feel the danger crackling all around them.

Lucius was watching; he seemed amused. "Always the protector, eh, Minerva? Or do you just like giving people orders?" When she didn't reply, he said, "Let us go, then. Believe me, he will be very glad to see you. He has plans for you."

"May I take my walking stick?" Mina asked. It leant against the wall next to her.

Lucius raised a sardonic brow. "Walking stick?" With a show of false solicitude, he went on, "Oh, dear. Don't tell me you've been hurt? Not more stunners, I hope?"

"It's war, Lucius. Injuries happen."

He laughed. "So they do. Well, then, by all means. . .Professor. Get your stick."

Mina reached for it, but instead of leaning on it, she pointed it at Lucius and cried, "_Stupefy_!" At almost the same moment, he shouted, too -- a word like "_Sectasem_!"

Gemma registered the next few moments only in chaotic bursts: blasts of red fire, deafening crashes, a shower of broken plaster, a cloud of dust, more shouting. She saw Lucius drop to the floor, his head hitting the desk as he fell; she saw Mina knocked from her chair, blood streaming down her arm.

Then silence.

From the corridor outside the office came the sounds of raised voices and pounding feet. But before anyone could reach them, Mina lifted her stick, and the door shut and locked before Gemma's startled eyes.

"What the bloody hell. . .?" Phil, dust-covered, crawled out from behind her desk.

Someone was banging on the door. "What's going on? Are you all right?"

"We. . ." started Phil, but Mina waved the stick and said, "S_ilencio_." Though Phil's mouth continued to move, no sound emerged.

Meanwhile, Mina called out, "We're fine, Gordon. Leave us, please. I'll take care of it."

"Min? Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'll be in touch. Soon. Please. . .go now." Gripping the edge of her desk, she pulled herself from the floor.

"Well, if you're sure. . ."

"I'm sure."

Gemma could tell that it was taking all of Mina's energy to answer. Her face was grey with pain, and her left shoulder looked a mess; blood had already soaked her torn sleeve and was beginning to drip on the carpet. Lucius's stick must have been a gun after all; only a bullet could have done that sort of damage.

"Mina, here, let me help you; Phil, ring for an ambulance. . ."

"No. No ambulance." Mina lowered herself into her chair and, with her good hand, began tracing the wound, murmuring softly to herself. To Gemma's speechless amazement, the jagged cuts began to knit; the bleeding slowed, then stopped.

Phil had come to stand over the fallen Lucius, her mouth working soundlessly. Mina waved her hand, and Phil's voice switched on like a radio.

". . .you were a killer, I knew it!" she was saying. "He's dead!"

Mina shook her head. "Merely stunned. He'll be fine." Her face gradually lost its deathly pallor, and she rose, stick in hand.

Gemma felt the reaction begin to set in. Her hands shook; tears stung her eyes. "Mina, what _is_ this? Tell me what's going on here. Please."

Mina looked at her with something like regret. "I'm sorry. But I can't explain."

Reaction had set in for Phil, too. She was livid. "What do you mean, you can't explain? You'll explain to the police, by god, because I'm going to ring them. . .What the hell do you think you're _doing_?" Her voice rose to a screech as Mina pointed her stick at Lucius once again. Phil lunged at Mina, who turned the stick towards her. To Gemma's relief, Phil stood still immediately.

"I will not hurt you, Miss Benton-Smith. Or you, Miss Braithwaite," Mina said. "Or even Lucius. You have my word." Her mouth twisted wryly. "For whatever that's worth to you. But I need to get myself and Lucius away from here, and if you try to interfere, I shall have to immobilise you. So stand back, please."

Suddenly she inhaled sharply and clutched at her shoulder. Gemma saw that her wound had reopened; it was bleeding heavily again. "Damn you, Lucius," Mina muttered. "I should have known. . ." With one sweep of the walking stick, she caused silvery cords to appear out of thin air and bind his body.

"Holy shit!" Wide-eyed, Phil grabbed Gemma's hand and started dragging her towards the door. Gemma was afraid, too, but not of Mina: she was afraid _for_ her. It was Lucius, not Mina, who was the menace; she was sure of it. She turned back to the injured woman.

"You're bleeding. Let us help you. . ."

But Mina didn't seem to be listening. She pointed her stick at the gouged plaster and then, closing her eyes, she visibly gathered her strength. Again, Gemma heard the soft murmur. The plaster miraculously repaired itself; the dust in the room disappeared. Another pointing, another murmur, and the blood on the carpet vanished.

Moving to her desk, Mina swept all her papers into her leather bag and tapped it with the stick; it immediately shrank to a size small enough to fit in her pocket. Then she tried healing her wound once again; she was less successful this time, but the bleeding did stop briefly.

Gemma and Phil watched, astounded. Gemma felt simply too dazed to move or speak, but Phil finally whispered, "Are you from another planet?"

This brought a brief smile to Mina's lips, but then she swayed and grabbed the desk for support.

"Mina!" Gemma's paralysis broke; she hurried to put a steadying arm around the older woman's waist. "Will you please sit down?"

Mina disengaged herself gently. "Thank you, but I must finish -- while I'm still able." She took a deep breath. "I need you to do something for me. . .Please," she said, looking straight into Phil's mulish face.

"Yes," said Gemma firmly. "Of course we will. Just tell us."

Mina removed the now-bloody tartan muffler from around her neck and tucked one end into Lucius's collar; the other she closed gingerly into her left hand. Her shoulder had begun to bleed again. She glanced at the wall clock, and Gemma was astonished to see that it was only 2:30 -- a mere twenty minutes had elapsed since Lucius had entered the office.

"Please say, '2:00 p.m. Wednesday'," Mina instructed. They did so, and she held out her good hand. Gemma grasped it; after a moment, so did Phil.

"You won't remember this afternoon," Mina said softly, "and I won't see you again. But I thank you very much, Gemma, my dear." Her lips quirked. "And Phil, of course." Then she smiled at them both, the warm, rich smile they had seen only once before, on the day the bird-woman came.

They couldn't help but smile back.

Picking up her stick, Mina tilted it towards them. "_Obliviate_," she said. A second later, her muffler glowed a bright blue, and she and Lucius disappeared.

---///---

Gemma stared around the office; something felt odd. Why were she and Phil just standing here, grinning?

"Where's Mina?" she asked. "Wasn't she just at her desk?"

Phil shrugged. "Gone for tea or something. Or maybe she's off to meet Ro. You just wait: I'm going to get her to introduce us, see if I don't. I'll get their story. I wonder if it will be anything like that film -- you remember it, _Caged Heat_?"

Gemma managed not to roll her eyes. "Why don't you ask her when she gets back? I think you should."

"You do?" Phil was clearly suspicious.

"Definitely," said Gemma, trying not to laugh. "I want to see if this will be the time she really _does _tell you to fuck off."


	12. Chapter 12: More Visitors

A/N -- "seanmhair" is Scottish Gaelic for "grandmother"

This chapter is a bit of a departure for me in stylistic terms; I'd really appreciate knowing what you think! Thanks~~ (love those reviews)

---///---

Chapter 12 -- More Visitors

_this pain is purple_

_she wouldn't have guessed, because the other pain had been red like the stunners, dazzling red not purple, not then. . ._

_now. . .different, not red, she can see it, purple. . .and black on the edges where it drips blackberry blood. . .a curse. . ._

"Cur. . ."

"Wait, listen! I think she's coming round."

"Oy, she's talking. . .over here. . ."

_"Over here, Minnie. . ." Calum wands the berries straight from the bushes into his pail, he doesn't touch them, he doesn't like the pricklies_

_he's of age now, he can use magic in the summer, but Minerva wouldn't use it even if she could, she wants to press the fruit beneath her fingers, wants to feel the warm slow spread of purple blue, taste the sting of blood and juice and thorn_

_"Blackberry blood," her grandmother says, looking at her stained fingers and lips, "black blood means a curse, my girl. . ." _

_this pain is purple and black, Minerva needs to warn her. . ._

"Gran. . .Seanmhair. . .it's cursed. . ."

"Minerva, are you awake? Can you hear me?"

_No. . .not her grandmother, it is Amelia, waking her, it's time to leave. . ._

_But it can't be Amelia, Amelia is dead, Voldemort killed her, he did it himself. . .others suspect this, but Minerva _knows_. . ._

_She'd made Fudge show her the Auror photographs of the murder scene, he hadn't wanted to, but he'd been no match for her, hapless Cornelius. . .she wouldn't have needed the _Imperius_ curse even if she'd been willing to use it -- just her teacher voice and a glare, and he'd cowered before her like the sweating, stammering twelve-year-old he'd once been_

_So he'd shown her the pictures, oh yes, he'd shown her. . .and the killer had been Tom himself, Minerva could tell, oh god she could see his traces, she knew them too well. . .Amelia. . ._

_Amelia_

_They meet in anonymous London hotels for the sake of Amelia's schedule, for the sake of discretion, but mostly for the sake of freedom. . .for the chance to be just two women unknown, two women alone in lovely tiny rooms that hold little more than a bed. . ._

_She looks down and sees Amelia, naked against stiff white sheets, her eyes smiling in invitation _

_"tell me what excites you" she whispers, but Minerva prefers not to, she doesn't want words, not for this. . .so she answers only, "your monocle, of course," and Amelia laughs, delighted _

_and with no magic but her laugh and her lips and her hands she makes the room enormous. . ._

_Minerva doesn't know how this can be, not if she's dead_

_they drift apart after a few years, no heartbreak, just a fading away and a mild fond regret and a last owl from Amelia, "dark days my dear stay safe"_

"safe. . ."

"What did she say? Damn it, talk to me, McGonagall."

"I don't think she hears us. Here, let me check. . ."

_A man's voice. Alastor? Isn't he dead as well? So many of them are. . .but she does hear, she always hears Alastor, bluff and laughing, rasping, angry, needing to warn them_

_She bedded Alastor, too, just the once, when Edgar Bones had been killed, and the Prewetts. . ._

_It is summer, the two of them are alone at the Order headquarters when an owl from Dumbledore brings the news_

_They come together fiercely, fucking against the deaths_

_he marks her, and she him, "Minerva," he groans and it is fast and hard and good and they scarcely recognise themselves _

_but always afterward they look at each other and remember . . ._

"I should have known it wasn't you, Alastor, I'm sorry. . ."

"What, she thinks you're Moody now? Merlin. . ."

"Minerva? Look at me. That's right, stay with me. Focus, now. How many fingers?"

_It is not Alastor after all, he is dead, this is Poppy, of course it is, she is the healer, Poppy will heal her, she needs to tell Poppy. . .how many fingers. . .important. . .just beyond the purple. . .how many fingers, scratched and bleeding black, cursed_

poppy poppy burning bright in the forests of the night

_the night is black like the blood but the curses are green and it is the air that is burning, burning green, and Poppy is falling and it is not Poppy but Calum and her seanmhair, her grandmother, and Gran is holding out her hand, she is smiling. . ._

"Seanna. . ."

_Minerva uses the old pet name, tries to grasp the hand, reaches for it through the rising purple-black tide . . ._


	13. Chapter 13: King's Cross, Part I

Chapter Thirteen -- King's Cross, Part I

Rolanda Hooch leaned back against the dingy yellow brick wall and scanned the crowds of travellers hurrying through King's Cross Station. She was feeling anxious, and she didn't like it.

She'd always thought of herself as fearless, whether facing down Bludgers or Umbridges or, worse, Minerva McGonagall's resistance to relationships with colleagues.

But that had been before. Before the Carrows, before the fall of Hogwarts, before the weeks afterward that she'd spent sick and stranded and not knowing.

And before that gut-punching afternoon when her blood-drenched lover had ported into the sitting room of the safehouse bearing a Stunned Lucius Malfoy and a cursed shoulder wound. "Damned slow wand," Min had said. And collapsed.

There had followed days of infection and pain and delirium, black days when Minerva, all sweat-soaked hair and haunted eyes, had talked to ghosts and had not known Ro.

Hooch stayed in Min's room for hours, watching the healers Kingsley had called in from among the refugees and refusing to listen when Arthur tried gently to tell her that they didn't hold out much hope.

Refusing, because this was Minerva McGonagall, after all; she was as stalwart as Gryffindor Tower, and she was _not _going to die from some effing damn curse of that sodding bugger Malfoy's. Besides, she'd promised. Well. . .as good as. Minerva had as good as promised not to get herself killed, and she never lied to Ro.

Never. It was this thought that Hooch had clung to as she watched the solemn-faced healers come and go, trying charm and potion and spell, until finally, late one grey evening, Minerva had looked directly at her and said, "Rolanda? Might I trouble you for some tea. . .?"

The fever had eased that night, and Min had slowly regained her self and her strength, and life, such as it was, had gone on.

In truth, of course, it had been going on even while Min lay at death's door. On the first day of her illness, the Order administered Vertiaserum to Malfoy and then argued at length over whether they could risk allowing him to retain his identity or should take the drastic and normally-taboo step of wiping his memory completely. After much debate, they'd finally decided to Obliviate only the last few years, but the dispute had created a tension in the Order that Rolanda thought still hadn't fully dissipated.

Well, at least they had learnt a lot from Lucius, including the welcome fact that he'd confided his discovery of Minerva to no one, having wanted for himself all the glory of delivering her to Voldemort.

So Minerva was safe. For now.

Since her recovery, she had been true to her promise not to "court danger"; instead, she'd stayed at the safehouse, taking over from Arthur Weasley many of the administrative duties that had been threatening to swamp him. Arthur was more relaxed, and both the Order and the relief efforts ran more smoothly, but Ro had known that this quiet period couldn't last.

And of course, it hadn't.

". . .you back in the field," she'd overheard Kingsley Shacklebolt saying to Min in the safehouse kitchen. "We need to reach more supporters, and people will talk to you. Most of them have known you since they were eleven years old." He chuckled. "They trust you, even the ones you still terrify."

"I don't want. . ." Minerva had begun, but Ro had taken a deep breath and interrupted.

"Yes, you do, Min," she said. "You know you do. And that's fine. It's time. There's just one catch."

"And what might that be, Madam H?" Kingsley had asked in his deep rumble.

"I'm going with her."

So now here she stood, waiting for Minerva at King's Cross and feeling as nervous as Neville Longbottom on his first broom.

It pissed her off.

But she was going to get over it.

Minerva was someone who was always going to go marching off to defend things and uphold things and save things. Bravely, recklessly, nobly, foolishly -- whatever you wanted to call it. But going, all the same. Such was the Gryffindor curse, and there wasn't a thing Ro could do to change that even if she'd wanted to, which she didn't. Minerva was who she was.

But then, Rolanda herself wasn't a Ravenclaw for nothing. What was all that cleverness good for, if not to save daft Gryffindors from themselves? True, Min had been careful, but it only took one little error, as the whole Lucius debacle had proved. So Hooch was resolved to be Min's personal security detail, and there wasn't a thing her bloody beloved could do to change _that_, either.

Hooch glanced once more at her ticket. They were going by Muggle train from King's Cross to Lincoln with a stop or two in between. She didn't yet know the details of their mission, nor did she much care; whatever it was, it would be necessary, and Min would handle most of it anyway. Not that Ro wasn't willing to do her bit, but politicking was Minerva's business. Her own was to turn herself into the new Alastor Moody. Constant vigilance.

Rolanda rubbed her eyes absently; the color-changing charm made them itch. (Muggles, she'd found, paid far too much attention to yellow irises.) She reflected, not for the first time, on the irony of the fact that the wizarding world had all that magic at its disposal and still couldn't find a cure for common charm side-effects. Minerva had a constant low-grade headache from the ocular charm she used to make her spectacles unnecessary.

Ro was early; Minerva wouldn't arrive for at least another quarter of an hour. Although Hooch had become more familiar with Muggle London in the months since the fall of Hogwarts, she still found the city daunting to negotiate, so she had left plenty of time to get to the station.

The trip had been easier than she'd expected, and she'd soon found herself riding the moving stairs to her platform. It reminded her of those few occasions when she'd visited Dumbledore's office. Minus the gargoyle and the flaming torches. The memory surprised her, although she wondered if maybe she ought to be more surprised at how rarely she thought of Hogwarts at all these days.

Rolanda felt oddly suspended in the present, as if she'd lost both past and future. Sometimes it was an oppressive present, with the constant threat of danger and the equally dispiriting constraints of everyday life: the crowded safehouse, the sense of being unsettled and displaced, the effort of living among Muggles.

But there were days when her current life soothed her. Sometimes she enjoyed having so many people in the house, people she'd shared so much with. At the best of times, it was like an extended family picnic.

Sometimes she and Potter, like mischievous children, would sneak out on their brooms, Disillusion themselves, and soar high above their safehouse neighbourhood, laughing at the Muggle silliness on display in the various gardens, at the absurd spectacle of Kingsley Shacklebolt attempting to park the ancient Muggle car the Order had managed to buy. Laughing at the sheer joy of being in the air.

And then there were the nights, all of them now, spent in Minerva's arms. Rolanda felt herself start to smile. Min no longer cared about maintaining the total discretion that had marked their former lives. Of course they shared a bedroom to save space, everyone at the safehouse doubled up, but she and Min openly shared a bed, too.

When they'd first been assigned their room, it had contained two narrow beds, but Minerva had simply transfigured them into one large one without a word. It had been her way of announcing that she and Rolanda were together, their relationship a secret no longer.

Now when Hooch offered a quick kiss in the kitchen or caught Min's hand in the garden, Minerva just smiled at her. It wasn't even uncommon for Min to put an arm around Ro's shoulder as they all gathered in the sitting room at night, and it had been quite a while since Potter and Granger had exchanged gobsmacked glances at the sight.

A train arrived from somewhere, and more people flooded through the station. Hooch raised herself on her toes and surreptitiously flicked her wand to keep the hordes out of her line of sight. It was unlikely that she'd miss Minerva, but she wasn't taking any chances. Constant damned vigilance.

---///---

Minerva McGonagall came out of the British Museum and shaded her eyes against the unexpected sunshine. The ocular-corrective charm she used made her sensitive to bright light, but she thought the mild disguise afforded by the lack of glasses was worth the discomfort.

As she waited for her vision to adjust, she lightly clasped the wand in her pocket, a habit she'd developed since she'd given up the walking stick. Although she found the stick too much of an encumbrance in the city, she had grown used to having something in her hand. The heft and familiarity of the wand reassured her, and she smiled a bit grimly. Let Lucius Malfoy or his ilk try to surprise her now.

Perhaps it hadn't been wise to visit the museum without some sort of concealing glamour, but she was still reluctant to move among Muggles with too strong an aura of magic about her; the ocular charm was as much as she was prepared to risk. Muggle institutions were open to dark wizards, too, and she didn't want them to sense her presence there. Given the choice, she'd prefer not to have to fight off Death Eaters by firing curses through crowds of tourists and Egyptian mummies.

But all had gone well enough, and she was glad she'd come. No Order business, no background research, no scheming to defeat the forces of evil. Just her own company and the pleasures of the past.

When she reached Great Russell Street, she decided that she had time enough to walk to King's Cross. Being outdoors felt good after so many weeks spent more or less inside the safehouse, and the weather was pleasant. She opened her coat as she walked; for someone who had spent over forty winters in the upper Scottish highlands, a December day in London seemed almost balmy.

As she waited at a crossing, her glance fell on the newspaper held under the arm of the man in front of her, and she was surprised to realise that tomorrow would be the forty-second anniversary of her first day of teaching at Hogwarts. She allowed herself a moment's regret and then resolutely forced the thought from her mind. With luck, she might have another forty years left to her, and if not, well. . . she had Rolanda, and they had now.

In the distance she could see the clock tower of the station, and she quickened her pace. Ro would be waiting for her.


	14. Chapter 14: King's Cross, Part II

A/N at end

---///---

Chapter Fourteen -- Kings Cross, Part II

Gemma Braithwaite nervously checked her printed itinerary for at least the tenth time as she made her way from the King's Cross tube platform to the train station proper. Of course, the ticket looked just as it had a few minutes previously: King's Cross to Peterborough to Lincoln.

To Lincoln. And to what would be her last days at the University of the Midlands. When the new year began, she would be newly employed in the research lab of a large pharmaceutical company. She would move to London as soon as the autumn term ended.

And Phil would not be coming with her.

Not that Phil knew it yet, because Gemma hadn't quite known it herself, not until she'd realised how much. . .lighter she had felt during these few days in town. When her cousin had rung to ask if she were interested in applying for the position at his firm, her first instinct had been to ask Phil's opinion, and she'd actually opened her mouth to do so, but somehow the words hadn't come out. _I'll look into it myself first_, she'd thought. _There's no point in telling Phil about it until I have more information_. She'd recognised this idea for the shameless rationalisation that it was, but she'd gone off to London on her own anyway.

Her cousin had installed her on a camp-bed in the study of his flat and told her she was welcome to stay with him until she could find a place of her own. By the time she'd turned off the light on that first night, she'd known that she was going to remain in London even if she didn't get this job. By the second night, job offered and accepted, she'd known that she wouldn't be asking Phil to join her. She felt whole again in ways she hadn't for a long time.

And now, at some point during this train ride, she had to figure out how to tell to Phil why she was leaving. She'd been thinking about it all morning, but so far, nothing eloquent had occurred to her, and she could hardly say, "because you'll never be my bird-woman."

But it _was_ Mina Morgan's fault, in a way. Hers and her Ro's. Gemma grinned to herself, imagining the wry raised eyebrow with which Mina would greet this statement if she heard it. Gemma still missed Mina. It had been a shock when she had just disappeared. One minute she'd been in the office, and the next minute -- or so it seemed -- she'd been gone.

For a while, traces of her had remained: students would come by trying to find her, or Gemma would notice "MMorgan" written in Mina's firm, thin script on the sign-out sheet on the supply-cupboard door. But the students had soon been reassigned -- Gordon had taken them himself -- and a new sign-out page had replaced the old, and life went on.

Phil, of course, was convinced that Mina had violated her parole and been dragged back to prison, but Gemma believed Gordon's more prosaic explanation. "A family emergency," he'd said. He looked as sorry as Gemma felt, and she'd suddenly had the sense that he liked Mina very much indeed. "Will she be all right?" Gemma had asked, and the usually-reserved Gordon had actually patted her shoulder. "I have no doubt of it," he'd said. So she'd felt reassured.

But she wished she'd had a chance to say goodbye.

For days after Mina had left, Gemma kept thinking she caught glimpses of her -- on the street, in the shops, or sometimes in the corridors, half-hidden by shifting streams of students. Gemma would push her way through the throngs, hurrying, only to find that the person she'd thought was Mina never was.

Like now, walking past the top of the escalator. Another tall woman with black boots and a thick, silver-dark plait. . .

Except that this time. . .this time. . .

This time. . .could it really be Mina? Here in London?

The woman moved past with the crowd and into the passage near the train platforms while Gemma was still pinned on the escalator several metres below. But with a flurry of insistent "pardons" and well-placed elbows that would have made Phil proud, Gem powered her way past an elderly man and two schoolgirls and gained the corridor in time to see the woman a few steps ahead of her.

Yes, _yes_. It _was _Mina. It _was._ In an elegant long black coat and those unmistakable black lace-up boots. She cut a distinguished figure as she wound her way past harried mums and piled luggage trolleys, moving with a cat-like ease that made Gemma wonder why she'd ever bothered with a walking stick.

Hardly daring to trust her own eyes, Gemma followed, keeping Mina well within her sight while she debated how to approach, _if _to approach, what to say, how _not _to play what her father used to call her favourite instrument: the fool. It shouldn't matter so much, she told herself, what Mina thought of her. But somehow, it did.

---///---

_Well,_ _finally,_ Hooch thought in relief, when at last she spied Minerva striding towards her through the crowds, wearing a newly-transfigured Muggle coat and the dragonhide boots Ro had given her for their first Christmas together. Not that Min was late, of course; she never was. But Ro had had enough of waiting.

---///---

Minerva had not been aware of feeling anxious, but she suddenly found herself breathing more easily when she spotted Rolanda standing next to the brick arch, her searching eyes no less piercing for not being yellow. In another instant, Minerva reached her, and ignoring the stiffness in her shoulder, gathered Ro into a swift, tight embrace.

Their train, she noted with satisfaction, was already at the platform.

---///---

Gemma saw Ro almost as soon as Mina did. She stopped, unwilling to intrude, as the two women met with a quick entwining of arms and a brief brushing of dark head against grey.

Then they moved toward their train, which was boarding, and Gemma realised that it was her train, too. Evidently they were all three going back to the Midlands. She followed Ro and Mina into the same car, sitting well away from them, but where she could see the aisle and just enough of Mina to make her real.

_I'll wait, _Gemma thought, and, maybe, after a time, when the train was under way, she would walk up and speak to them.

---///---

Hooch budged her knees over as Minerva sat down opposite her and looked with interest out the window. For a moment the years fell away, and Ro saw Min as she must once have been, an eager little black-haired girl just starting out on the Hogwarts Express.

The seat was less uncomfortable than Rolanda had expected, and she settled back with a relieved sigh. They were on their way, just the two of them. Almost like a holiday, really. She grinned cheekily at Min. Maybe this journey wouldn't be so bad at that. Muggles and all.

---///---

The train lurched slightly, and McGonagall couldn't help but lean forward a bit in anticipation. She and Kingsley had identified at least a dozen potential supporters to be approached on this trip, in carefully-unplottable meeting-places, and the dozen would lead to more, they hoped, and then more. . .

The cause was not lost. Not lost at all.

She answered Hooch's grin with one her own and touched Ro's hand lightly.

---///---

Gemma watched Mina smile at her bird-woman and thought that Phil had been right again. One way or another, they _had _learnt Mina's story -- all of it that Gemma needed to know, at any rate.

She decided that she wouldn't speak to Mina and Ro on the train after all. If they were headed back to university, she could see them there; she wouldn't have to say goodbye now.

And if they were going somewhere else, well. . .she'd got her wish, she'd seen Mina again, fit and in seemingly good spirits -- and together with Ro.

Perhaps she needed no better farewell.

---///---

With a hiss of brakes, the 1:45 to Peterborough drew away from the platform and slid out of King's Cross Station to gather speed under the open sky.

-

-

~~The End~~

-

-

-

A/N -- And so we come to the end of "Trainspotting," and I hope you don't find it too annoyingly anti-climactic. It's the sort of ending that my partner's son calls "life-goes-on" -- and he doesn't mean the term as a compliment. Still, as much as I hate to leave these characters and this particular universe, this part of the story feels finished to me. I couldn't _not _end here.

Except that there's a good chance it won't be the _end _end. I prefer to think of it as "the conclusion in which nothing is concluded" (to steal the title of the last chapter of Samuel Johnson's _Rasselas). _I may return to this particular universe at some point, perhaps with side- or back- or future-stories. I think I'd like to know a little more about everyone and about what might happen next. So stay tuned.

To my faithful reviewers, I extend a deep and heartfelt thank-you; your responses have given me such pleasure week after week. I'm very grateful to you. There's nothing quite like the little thrill of seeing a "Review Alert" message in the in-box. (And to that end, if you're a reader who hasn't had a chance to comment yet, I'd love to hear your views, now that the saga has reached a stopping-point. Go ahead, click that review link. You know you want to.)

Thank you, readers! It's been a great (train)ride.


	15. Chapter 15: Interlude

**A/N**: This story is part of the "Trainspotting" universe. I think it can be read on its own as a one-shot, but if you want the full experience, you can find the whole "Trainspotting" epic here at FFN. (I'll cross-post as a chapter to the main story, too). Happy New Year to all!

---///---

Interlude

A "Trainspotting" One-Shot

by Kelly Chambliss

---///---

Except for the fire crackling in the grate, the bedchamber was quiet, and anyone who glanced quickly through the door could have been forgiven for thinking that the room was empty. But if this mythical observer had waited a moment, his or her eye might have been caught by a movement from the bed.

A bare arm slid from beneath the duvet and pushed aside the thick folds to reveal the naked form of Rolanda Hooch, former Holyhead Harpy, former Hogwarts Quidditch mistress, and current well-satisfied lover.

"We should get up," she said, making no move to do so. "People will be here in three hours."

Someone stirred beside her. "You're the one who insisted that we take to our bed in the middle of the day. The day we're hosting a Christmas Eve party, no less." Hooch's bedmate spoke sternly, an effect that was rather undermined by her own nakedness and the fact that she was leaning over to trail kisses along Rolanda's shoulder.

Ro grinned. There had been a time when Minerva McGonagall would never have considered abandoning herself to hot sex in the middle of the day, no matter how aroused she might have been by, for example, Ro's sending her -- via owl to the High Table during lunch in the Great Hall -- a detailed description of just exactly what she proposed they do instead of sitting there waiting decorously for pudding. She'd delighted in the way Minerva's cheeks had slowly flushed as she read the note (it had been very detailed indeed) and the way her breathing had quickened, causing her chest to rise most invitingly. But Min had Vanished the note as soon as she'd finished it (well, Severus _had _started to seem a bit interested) and had shaken her head frowningly at Rolanda; it had been after midnight before Ro had finally had the chance to offer a practical demonstration of what she'd written.

But that had happened in another lifetime -- a time when she had thought she would spend the rest of her life coaching Quidditch at Hogwarts, her days measured by the unchanging rhythms of term and summer. That had been before the fall of the Ministry, before the triumph of Voldemort and his Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts, before the lives of everyone she knew had changed irrevocably or, in too many cases, had ended completely. That had been before she and Minerva and so many others had had to leave behind all that they knew and take up new lives in the Muggle world.

Yet even this new life had gone on, and despite its deprivations and sadnesses, Rolanda couldn't deny that there were compensations. Like this new Minerva, the one who happily stopped their party preparations to tumble into bed for an afternoon quickie, the one who no longer made any attempt to conceal their relationship (she hadn't even been embarrassed last Hogmanay when Potter had come upon them snogging in the safe-house kitchen long before they'd had the excuse of too much champagne).

And this very room in which they lay was a compensation. What with one thing and another, it had taken them five years, but Rolanda and Minerva had finally managed to get a flat of their own -- they'd moved last month from the crowded safe-house they'd shared with Arthur Weasley and Potter and Kingsley and the Granger girl and as many other wizarding refugees as the house could hold. Rolanda felt closer to those people than she did to her own blood kin, but she had to admit that the togetherness had often been too much; now the luxury of sharing two small rooms and a kitchen with just Minerva was almost more pleasure than she could bear.

For the party, they would magically expand the sitting room to accommodate the guests, but they'd leave the bedroom as it was. Ro looked with satisfaction at the small fireplace, the well-stuffed bookcase, the cozy bed covered by the comforter of muted blues and golds that had been a housewarming gift from Hermione. "It's for both Gryffindor and Ravenclaw," she'd said, and Ro had been pleased; it was silly, but she'd come to see the quilt as a symbol of her union with Minerva, the beautifully-mingled colours distinct but inseparable.

Any further thoughts Rolanda might have had about the new flat were cut short by the progress of Minerva's lips across her shoulder and collarbone and…ooh, her breast, but before she could lose herself in sensation, Min offered a final kiss and sat up with a smile. Ro loved seeing her like this, the day's tension temporarily smoothed from her face, her passion-tousled dark hair spilling over her pale skin.

"Perhaps I should be more worried about keeping people safe tonight," Min said, brushing hair from her eyes, "but I do think we've taken all the security precautions we can."

"The place is warded within an inch of its life, Min," Rolanda reassured her. "_And_ unplotted. _And_ protected by Fidelius. I have every confidence in your spellwork, and obviously so does everyone else. No parents would have sent their children to the school otherwise, and these are the same protections you use there."

The new school had been absorbing all Minerva's energies for over a year. Once the more immediate refugee crises had been attended to, and everyone had faced the fact that overthrowing the reign of the Death Eaters -- even if possible -- would be a long and arduous process, Minerva and Filius had begun planning to open an academy for Muggle-born witches and wizards. The first term had just been completed.

The scale was small, just a few classes conducted in the magically-constructed wing of one of the safe-houses, but Rolanda, for one, had no doubt that the school would succeed and expand. It was the sort of project at which Minerva excelled, and she'd got it off the ground in the face of some stiff opposition. Many people had argued that gathering children together would make too tempting a target for the Death Eaters, but Minerva had patiently answered every objection. "We cannot let an entire generation of magical children remain uneducated," she had insisted, and such was the force of her personality and reputation that she had of course prevailed.

"Yes, we should be safe enough," Minerva nodded now. "I'm more concerned about whether we'll have enough rum punch; you know how Kingsley gets at Christmas, and Augusta can usually match him glass for glass."

Rolanda reached over to twist a particularly tempting lock of black-and-silver hair round her finger. "While you, of course, plan to be perfectly abstemious."

Min gave the sort of sniff she used to reserve for Sybill Trelawney's more elaborate idiocies. "Certainly not. It's Christmas, after all. But you'll never catch a McGonagall diluting perfectly good spirits with fruit juice."

Ro laughed. "Well, at least Hermione won't be a drain on the punch supply this year -- not that she was ever much of a drinker."

"I wish I could be happier about this baby, Rolanda," Minerva said, her expression darkening slightly as she sank back against the pillows. "Of course I would never hint such a thing to Miss Granger, but I fear that she and Mr Weasley have moved too quickly. They've been reunited for only six months, and you know that Ronald still hasn't fully recovered; he probably never will."

Rolanda did know. Now that the initial euphoria over Weasley's return had faded, the extent of his neurological injuries was becoming harder to ignore. They'd found him -- or rather, he'd found them -- only last June, after a healer had been able to reverse much of the unusual obliviation spell that had apparently hit Ron during the Battle of Hogwarts. Missing and presumed dead since that night, he'd in fact been living among wizarding folk in Wales. He'd had no idea how he'd got there or even who he was, until a traveling healer had recognized his symptoms and treated him.

The day word reached the safe-house that Ron Weasley was alive had been the best day Rolanda had experienced since. . .well, since she'd realised that Minerva would survive the cursed shoulder wound she'd received from Lucius Malfoy. Of course, nothing would ever compare in intensity to the joy that Min's recovery had brought Ro, but Ron's return came close. Arthur Weasley had been practically beside himself, Granger had beamed with a happiness too deep for words, and even Potter's thin, normally-shadowed face had been split by an ear-to-ear grin for days.

But everything wasn't all tea-and-roses, of course. Weasley still had moments of frightening blankness when his memory would disappear again, and even at the best of times, he was easily frustrated and given to displays of temper. He alternated between seeming thrilled about the coming baby and yielding to a terrified panic.

"You're right, it is awfully soon," Ro said to Minerva. "A baby may be an affirmation of life, but it's not going to erase all our troubles. Still, it's too late to get them to change their minds now."

"That would be magic indeed," Min replied wryly. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to trust to Miss Granger's good sense."

"She was wasted in Gryffindor," Ro said. "The girl is obviously a Ravenclaw."

It was a long-standing, comfortable joke between them, and Minerva responded as she always did: "But luckily, she was spared that fate."

They smiled at each other. "Well, you're brave and smart enough for all of them," Rolanda said, turning on her side and tracing a finger lightly over the scars on Minerva's shoulder. Lucius's curse hadn't killed her, but the damage had been deep, and Min -- like Weasley, like Potter, like all of them -- would never be as whole as she'd once been. They all bore marks, one way or other, as Ro was reminded every time she saw Minerva's face tighten with pain, whether from her shoulder or from someone's mention of Hagrid or Poppy. Or Severus.

But only rarely, in the dark and with Rolanda in her arms, did Minerva ever talk about the people they'd lost. And of course, everyone in the Order knew better than to offer her help or sympathy when her shoulder injury flared up. Even Kingsley had stammered into silence at the look Min had given him the first (and only) time he'd tried to lift something for her. She'd Levitated whatever-it-was with the smallest flick of her wand and snapped, "It's called magic, Mr Shacklebolt. Or have you forgotten that I'm a witch?"

"Not for an instant," Kingsley had said solemnly, and after Min had left the room, he'd glanced at Ro and mimed mopping his brow.

The memory made Rolanda grin, and predictably, Min noticed. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing. Just loving you."

Her beloved partner gave a tiny snort of suspicion and raised one eyebrow in a gesture so quintessentially Minerva that Ro laughed aloud. Cupping Min's face in her hands, she kissed her deeply, relishing the feel of her lover's warm body against her own.

After a breathless few moments, Minerva whispered, "I thought you said we had to get up."

"Mmmm, we do," Ro said. "In a few minutes."

And in a few minutes, they would. They would get up, dress, finish the party preparations, and welcome their friends to their home. In the months and years to come, they would teach magic to children and fight against the darkness and die in that fight if they needed to, although Ro was damned if she'd go quietly. Or let Minerva go, either.

Yes, they would get up and do what they needed to do. . .in a few minutes.

Rolanda wrapped her arms around Minerva and buried her face in the long, soft hair. They would get up in a few minutes.


End file.
